Hi everyone,
We've got some great changes for our current advertisers today, and especially for users who are considering advertising on MC-Market!
Ads manager improvements
Our ads manager system is unlike any other ad platform; it’s uniquely tailored toward the needs of our advertisers and has been a significant area of discussion since its introduction earlier this year. Overall the new system has been a success, and we’re now making it even better.
Smart bidding
Previously the amount you bid would be what you are charged if you’re in a leading position in daily auctions. We have changed the system to work similarly to a proxy bidding system on other platforms (eBay calls it smart bidding). Simply set your max bid number to be the maximum price you’re willing to pay for the ad position, and the system will automatically bid in increments on your behalf, but only up to your maximum. When setting your max bid for ad spots with multiple leading positions, you can choose between always aiming to win the highest position possible or aiming to bid just enough for your ad to be active.
Switch from daily to weekly auctions
We thought that daily auctions lowering the initial costs to test our Ads manager would outweigh the cons associated with it, but have found that the increased attention that daily auctions require causes more problems than it solves. We’ve switched back to weekly auctions for all advertisement positions. Ad auctions now occur every Tuesday at 12 PM (Noon) UTC, with ads going live 1 hour after. All existing bids in auctions have been multiplied by 7 and rounded down to the nearest bid increment.
Minimum bid increments
Our different ad packages now have a minimum increment amount between user bids. The increment for each of the ad types are:
- $0.50 for featured resources and threads
- $2.50 for forum and resources sidebar banners
- $10 for topbar banners
- $5 for bottombar banners
You can still bid the same amount as other advertisers, with the first bid taking priority. The increments are the multiple that must be chosen. For example, to bid on the topbar banner, a $250 or $260 bid is possible, but a $255 or $260.50 bid isn’t.
Analytics improvements
We’ve fixed a major ongoing bug that made some advertisers unable to see analytics from their ads. All historical data from ads has been restored and will be visible, except for the click statistics for banners, which we were uncounted until the 1st of June. We’re now tracking the bid amount, CTR, and CPM for each period during the ad cycle which should make it easier to draw conclusions from the data.
Anti-snipe extensions
Ad auctions end on Tuesday at 12 PM (Noon) UTC, but the winning ads don’t display live until 1 PM. If you place a bid in the last 5 minutes of the auction, that individual auction will be extended by an additional 5 minutes from the time of the bid. During the extension, anyone else can also place a bid, and it will also extend the auction deadline by 5 minutes, capped at a 1-hour maximum. This means that it is not possible to snipe a top bid in the final second before an auction.
New notifications system
With bidding, it’s crucial to have the ability to receive real-time updates, which have been added with our new notifications system. It’s now possible to receive notifications when:
- Credits are taken from your balance to pay for winning bids
- Your ad is no longer in a winning slot
- Another advertiser outbids you
- You’ve lost an auction
- Your balance is insufficient to afford your ad
- Your banner ad has been approved by a moderator
- Your banner ad has been rejected by a moderator
Rather than only being notified through our onsite alerts system, it’s also possible to receive emails, push notifications, or even Discord direct messages if you have synced your Discord account! Your notification preferences for advertisements are fully customizable through the Your ads page.
Other minor fixes & changes
- Added an exclusive #advertisers channel on Discord for people with active bids
- Added functionality to view current auction bids without needing to create an ad
- Added pagination to the ‘Your ads’ table
- Adjusted ads to now always display in order from the highest to lowest bids
- Adjusted ‘views’ to be called ‘impressions’
- Fixed individual emails being sent for every ad auction, now bundling them together
- Fixed not all banner ads having their corners curved
- Removed the requirement to have at least $5 in Credits before creating an ad
- Removed the ability to see ad analytics in the half-hourly interval
- Removed ‘Display your ad here’ messages from displaying to guests
- Miscellaneous improvements and optimisations behind the scenes
If you're an advertiser, be aware that with the switch to weekly bidding, the next auction will occur tomorrow (Tuesday) at 12 PM UTC. Click here to see a countdown. With the changes we've made to bidding, we strongly recommend you edit your existing bids to account for the changes we've made today!
Discord improvements & more giveaways
The introduction of our Discord server has been a resounding success! We’re extremely pleased with the community response and engagement so far. We’ve been continually improving, such as the recent introduction of our new points system and countless bug fixes. Specifically, we have:
- Added a new !ads system to only allow people who chat to promote their thread/resources
- Added a !help command and many other new commands for easy access to information and links
- Added a !daily command for Supreme users to claim 250 points a day
- Added a !report command
- Added a new voice channel for Ultimate users
- Added a 1.5x multiplier for Ultimates generating points
- Added our censor list from on-site to the Discord
- Added descriptions to each of the channels
- Added a few miscellaneous emojis and stickers
- Adjusted our Discord rules to be much more clear and concise
- Adjusted voice channels to have nicer names
- Adjusted account verification systems to work faster
- Fixed all role permissions to work as intended
- Removed the ability to create Discord threads
A few weeks ago to celebrate the release of our official Discord server we gave away $6,000 worth of items contributed by our generous community, and today we have more! We have an entire stack of 1 month Discord Nitro subscriptions to offer, that’s 64 individual winners! Like the previous giveaway, to enter all you need to do is have been registered for at least a week, sync your Discord account, and react in our #giveaways channel. The giveaway ends in just 3 days, so be quick! Thanks to Mikel for contributing 30 of the Nitro subscriptions, Stax95 for contributing 2, Automating for contributing 1, and Xeify for contributing 1.
Pride
In April of last year, we made an announcement in which we addressed the discriminatory comments we tend to see made particularly towards those with certain sexual orientations or gender identities. Comments such as "I don’t support" or "I don’t agree with" when referring to someone’s sexuality or gender identity are far too often not recognized for their discriminatory implications. They are harmful, damaging, discriminatory, and while the internet tends to see a rise in their spread during Pride month, they will never be tolerated here.
This June, and long after, we hope that everyone is able to be proud of who they are. On behalf of the team charged with protecting this platform’s members, many of whom are themselves part of the LGBT community, I want you to know that you have our unconditional support.
Thanks gamers!
Mick
good update
