rules
This is a pay-to-play leaderboard. Rank is bought. There is no editorial judgement about which ad deserves to be on top, only which one paid most.
rank
- Rank is sorted by bid, highest first. Ties go to whoever got there first. Rank is never stored — it is worked out fresh every time the board is read.
- The top 3 ranks get a screen, and every one of them loops on its own. Rank 4 and below is a line of text. There is nothing in between.
- Rank changes only when money lands. Nothing goes live because a page loaded or a redirect fired.
bidding
- The floor is $1. One transaction is capped at $50,000.
- To pass a listing you must beat it by max($1, 10%), rounded up to whole dollars. A listing at $2,000 is taken at $2,200 — not $2,001.
- Bidding less than the top price is fine. You go on the board at whatever rank that amount buys.
- Raising your own listing charges only the difference. If you are on at $2,000 and go to $2,420, you pay $420. Bids are not cumulative.
- Because of that, whoever just lost the screen is always its cheapest buyer. That is deliberate.
- Stripe will not process a charge under $0.50, so a raise smaller than that is refused before it reaches them.
no holds, no floors, no protection
There is no minimum time at rank 1. No cooling-off period. No anti-snipe extension. No notice before someone takes your screen.
You can pay for the top screen and lose it eleven minutes later. That is the product working as intended, not a fault.
your listing is your url
- Listings are keyed by normalized URL. A second bid on a URL already on the board raises that listing rather than creating a duplicate.
- Anyone may raise any URL, including one they do not own. They are paying to boost somebody else’s ad, which is allowed.
- Only the holder of the manage link may change the headline, body, or video. A raise without it moves the listing up and leaves the copy alone.
- Changing the video always sends it back to review.
- Headlines are capped at 60 characters, bodies at 180.
video
- Upload a clip straight from your phone, or paste a YouTube link, a Vimeo link, or a direct .mp4 / .webm over https. Anything else is refused at submission.
- Uploads have to be H.264. HEVC is refused because Chrome and Firefox can’t play it, and most of the board would see a black rectangle.
- There is no review queue. Your rank and your video both go live the moment the payment lands. Nobody approves anything first.
- We can pull a video or remove a listing at any time, without a refund. That is the only control, and it happens after the fact rather than before.
- A pulled video leaves the listing at the rank it paid for, as text, permanently. No refund, no bump.
- A video stays on file when you fall out of the top 3, and starts playing again the moment you climb back.
money
- Bids are non-refundable. Payment buys a position in a sort order, not a duration.
- Rank is not guaranteed for any period of time, and you may lose the top screen minutes after buying it.
- Video is subject to review and may be rejected, with no refund.
- We may remove any listing. Removed listings leave the board and cannot be re-listed.
- The address you pay with is the address we use. When you lose rank 1, or drop out of the top 3, we email you what happened and what taking it back costs you specifically.
- At most one of those per listing per 15 minutes, however fast the board moves.
- Every one of them carries an unsubscribe link that deletes the address.
links
- Every outbound listing link is marked
rel="sponsored nofollow". These are paid placements; passing ranking signal through them would put every advertiser here at risk. - Clicks are counted and the destination is sent no referrer.
what we will not run
Sexual services, prescription drugs, forged documents, account-hacking services, and guaranteed-return investment schemes. Submissions are screened for these, and the screen is a speed bump rather than a guarantee — we remove what gets through.