How our daily ad auction prices sponsored slots
Sponsored slots on VentureIndex are sold in daily auctions. Here's how bidding works, how the clearing price is set and when ads go live.
The sponsored cards on the VentureIndex home page aren't sold by a sales team or at a fixed price. Every day is its own auction, so the price of a slot rises when many companies want it and falls when few do, a bit like a stock. This post explains how that works, for advertisers and for anyone curious about the chart on the ad market page.
A fixed number of slots, every day#
Each UTC day has a fixed number of sponsored slots in the home page side rails. Every card is clearly labelled "Sponsored" and sits next to VentureIndex's own cards. There is also a minimum price per day: the floor the auction starts from. The current numbers are always shown on the market page.
Bidding#
To advertise, you sign in, design your card (title, one line of copy, an icon and colours), and set two things:
- Your maximum price per day. The most a single day is worth to you.
- The days you want. A start date and how many days to run.
Each day in your range is a separate auction, and your maximum applies to each of them. While you are filling in the form, it shows how many of those days you would win at current prices and what they would cost.
One fair price for every winner#
When a day's auction closes, the highest bids win the slots. An earlier bid wins a tie. Every winner then pays the same clearing price:
- If there were more bids than slots, the clearing price is the highest losing bid.
- If there were spare slots, it is the minimum price.
You never pay more than your maximum, and usually you pay less. Because the price is set by the bids around yours rather than your own, the sensible strategy is simply to bid what a day is really worth to you.
When things happen#
Bidding for a day closes at 22:00 UTC the day before. At that moment the winners are decided, and their cards go live at 00:00 UTC for exactly 24 hours. Nothing needs to be approved by hand. Until a day closes you can raise your maximum or withdraw. Bids can't be lowered, because that would let a leading bidder shade the price after others have reacted. Days you have already won still run if you withdraw.
Reading the market chart#
The chart on the ad market shows each closed day's clearing price as a solid line: the market's daily close. Next to it, a dashed line shows the live price of every open auction, which is what winners would pay if the day closed now. The table below lists each open day with its live price, the change from the previous day, the bid needed to win, and how many bids it has.
What we allow#
Ads must link directly to the advertiser's own site over https. Link shorteners and bare IP addresses are rejected so visitors always know where they are going. Clicks and views are counted without cookies and shown to the advertiser for each campaign. We can take down an ad that breaks the rules, and it comes off the site immediately.
If you want your product in front of founders, operators and acquirers, see today's prices. If you are here for the data, the rankings and sectors are a good place to start.