The BuiltByBit Ads manager is a platform that allows you to promote and grow your business. The system allows you to create, manage, and analyze the performance of ads. This article explains how to use our Ads manager. If you’re looking for information about our audience and the benefits of advertising with us, please refer to the Overview page.
How it works
Advertising is done through our bidding system to ensure that ads are always priced fairly based on demand. This means that you’ll never be paying more than an ad spot is worth and won’t have to wait in long queues to receive a slot.
There is no minimum amount of BuiltByBit Credits required in your balance to purchase an advertisement, just enough to afford your first bid. You can learn more about Credits and purchase them here. Then you can create an advertisement and enter the maximum amount you're willing to pay for your advertisement to display each week as your 'max bid', which will be discussed in more detail later in this article. You can create an ad or update your bid at any time, but any adjustments to bidding will not be updated until the auction that happens every Friday at 9:00 PM UTC. When the auction occurs, you will have your bid amount deducted from your Credit balance, and your ad will be active for the following week.
Setting your bid for an auction only needs to happen once, and it will continue placing bids until you either:
Pause or deactivate your advertisement, which can be done at any time
Hit the budget you set for your advertisement
Have your thread or resource moved to a different location
Are banned from BuiltByBit
Display banner advertisements require manual approval from our staff members before they’re eligible to enter an auction. Thread and resource featuring ads do not require manual approval from us. Once an ad is created, it will display on the Your ads page where can view the status, edit details, adjust your bid, view analytics, or deactivate your advertisement.
Auction period
You can place, retract, and edit ads at any time. Each week on Thursday, we will recalculate which ads should display based on their bids.
Friday at 9:00 PM UTC: The standard auction period ends
Friday from 9:00 PM - 10:00 PM UTC: Anti-snipe buffer if any bids are placed or edited in the past 5 minutes
Friday at 9:00 PM UTC: Previous week's ads stop displaying and this week's leading bids have their ads go live
To prevent the auction from being sniped by an advertiser placing a bid at the last possible moment before it ends, auctions are extended by 5 minutes every time a bid is placed within 5 minutes of the auction ending, up until the advertisement activation time.
Smart bidding
It's crucial to understand the difference between a max bid and a current bid. A max bid is the theoretical maximum amount of Credits you're willing to spend in the auction to have your ad active for a week. The current bid is how much our automated system automatically bids on your behalf and is the amount that's shown publicly. The max bid that you set is not public, and there is no reason to make your maximum bid an amount that's less than you're actually willing to pay since we'll always ensure you bid as little as possible to achieve your goal. In auctions with more than a single winner (all except for the topbar and bottombar banners), you'll be able to select whether your goal is to:
Bid for the highest position
Bid for any position
We recommend bidding for the highest position as ads that display first tend to receive significantly more clicks, but bidding for any position will always make your current bid as low as possible to still be active.
Example
To illustrate how this works, an example will be provided of what an auction for a featured thread would look like if you could see all of the information. Grey information in brackets is not visible to other advertisers, only to the person placing the bids.
Leading bids:
1st. Mick - $15.00 current bid - entered auction 2 weeks ago ($21 max - bid for highest position)
2nd. Justis - $15.00 current bid - entered auction 12 minutes ago ($15.00 max - bid for highest position)
3rd. Kram - $11.50 current bid - entered auction 6 hours ago ($14.50 max - bid for highest position)
4th. Jayson - $11.00 current bid - entered auction 12 hours ago ($11 max - bid for highest position)
5th. Ellie - $10.50 current bid - entered auction 3 days ago ($85 max - bid for any position)
Trailing bids:
Harry - $10.50 current bid placed 6 hours ago ($10.50 max - bid for highest position)
Bot - $0.50 current bid placed 2 months ago ($0.50 max - bid for any position)
Analysis
This auction illustrates the different strategies and intentions at play from the advertisers, as well as the factors that come into play when our system places your current bids. Mick is winning the top position because he had the highest max bid set of the advertisers who had their goal set for the highest position. The system only needed Mick to match Justis' bid rather than exceed it because he entered the auction before Justis did. Although Kram aims for the highest position possible and has his max bid set to $14.50, his current bid is only $11.50 because he only needed to bid one interval higher than Ellie and Jayson to secure the highest position he could afford. Although Ellie's maximum bid is far higher than all other advertisers', she's only aiming for any position rather than the highest she can get so she conserves a majority of her Credits while still having a featured thread. Bot may have strategically set his max bid to $0.50 so that if other advertisers above him back out, he'll get the slot for a week for an extremely low price. Being involved in the auction and not winning doesn't cost anything, so it is a smart strategy if he doesn't particularly want his thread to be featured but will take a bargain if the opportunity strikes.
Ad formats
Featured thread
Threads that are featured will always stick to the top of the forum that they're in, regardless of how recently they were bumped or replied to. Being at the top of the list results in far more views for your thread which makes being featured very valuable. Only 5 threads can be featured per forum, and they're displayed in order from the highest bidder to the lowest bidder. The minimum bid required is just $0.50 per week, and the bids can only be placed in $0.50 increments.
Featured resource
Featured resources are very similar to featured threads, where they allow for any resource to be shown at the top of each resource category. Up to 6 resources can be featured at a time in each category and the minimum bid is also just $0.50 per week with $0.50 increments. On the resource index page, 6 random featured resources from categories will be displayed.
Display banners
Display banners allow you to put a banner advertisement on our platform. They're the simplest ad format, only requiring a banner to be uploaded and a link provided for where users should be directed. Banners are particularly great for building brand awareness since they display in more places and more predominantly than featured threads or resources. All positions allow for banners to be in a png, jpeg, jpg, or gif file format. We offer display banners in four different locations:
Forum sidebar: Shows to all users on the homepage and forum list pages at the top of the sidebar. Although the banner is small, it showing to our paid users makes it very effective with providing a return on your ad spend. Banners may be 468x60 or 728x90 in size. The minimum bid is $10 per week with $2.50 increments and up to 5 ads can be active at a time.
Resources sidebar: Shows to all users on the resources index page, resources list, and resource product pages at the top of the sidebar. This position is great for increasing the purchases of your product! The minimum bid is $10 per week with $2.50 increments and up to 5 ads can be active at a time.
Global topbar: Shows only to users without Premium. Topbar banners are far larger, displaying at their full 728x90 size and span across the top of every page. 468x60 banner sizes aren't allowed in this position since stretching them to fit the space would cause pixelation issues. The minimum bid is $150 per week with $10 increments and only a single ad can be active at a time.
Global bottombar: Shows only to users without Premium. It is the same as the topbar banner, but it's below content instead of being above content. The minimum bid is $50 per week with $5 increments and only a single ad can be active at a time.
Ad statuses
Every ad has a status associated with it that governs how it acts and can be interacted with. Our system is quite unique so it is important to understand what each status means. The status types are as follows:
Active: An ad being active means that it has won the previous auction with a bid high enough to win a slot. Your ad being active only means that it is the highest bid for this week.
Outbid: Being outbid means that your ad is still actively going to be included in auctions; it's just not bid a high enough amount to win a slot. It can be a viable strategy to bid a low for an ad even if it does become outbid so that if the price ever does drop, you can get the ad for a cheap price.
Pending auction: Every Thursday at 5:00 PM UTC the ad auction runs and will adjust which ads are marked as active based on the bid amounts. Any ads created before an auction are in limbo while pending auction.
Insufficient funds: When an ad is marked as having insufficient funds, only you can see it in the auction, other advertisers will not see it until you top up your Credit balance to exceed the current bid.
Pending approval: Display banner ads require manual review by BuiltByBit staff before being able to join in an auction. Ads in this state are marked as pending approval and you will receive an alert once your ad has been approved or rejected.
Rejected: Ads are only marked as rejected if BuiltByBit staff review the submitted content and find that it breaks our rules or was submitted incorrectly.
Inactive: Deactivating your ad or running out of Credits for the next auction marks it as inactive. If staff move your thread to a different forum or resource to a different category then it will also mark your ad as inactive.
Payment
Ads are only able to be purchased with BuiltByBit Credits, which are our non-refundable and non-transferable currency used for account upgrades and advertisements. We accept almost every payment method for Credit purchases, including PayPal, credit card, cryptocurrency, and wire transfers.
We provide a 5% discount on any purchases made through cryptocurrency. We also offer additional discounts on bulk Credit purchases, which are as follows:
$50 and above: 5% off
$250 and above: 10% off
$500 and above: 15% off
$1,000 and above: 20% off
$2,500 and above: 25% off
$10,000 and above: 30% off
These discounts can provide a significant advantage in auctions, as each $1.00 bid could have cost you just $0.65 while others are have paid more per Credit. With bulk discounts, it is possible to outbid others even if you're spending less US dollars. Please Create a ticket if you're having any issues with purchasing Credits.
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