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Getting startedInstall in one commandSign in and link your editorChoose where the line appearsYour first earnings
How it worksHow the auction worksWhat counts as an impressionThe 70% splitHouse ads and quiet marketsPayouts and your balance
Trust and privacyWhat leaves your machineVerify it yourselfYour editor never breaksTurning it off
For advertisersAdvertise on AwaitfulBidding and budgetsOne line, one link
TroubleshootingNo sponsored line showingShown but not creditedThinking line fell back to the status bar
Referencenpx awaitful referenceFrequently asked questionsGlossary
How it works

How the auction works

Updated July 17, 2026

Awaitful runs a weighted-share, first-price auction. Every live bid buys a share of voice - the fraction of all sponsored moments that campaign gets - and a winner pays its own bid, only when a view is verified. There is no rate sheet, and no rank to buy.

Advertiser A 60%
$6.00
Advertiser B 30%
$3.00
Advertiser C 10%
$1.00
drawn, weighted by bid
Aslot 1
Aslot 2
Bslot 3
An illustration with round numbers. Three bids make a $10 pot; each bid buys its share of voice (bid / pot), and three slots are drawn with replacement - which is why Advertiser A can hold two slots, and why a slot is a draw, not a rank.

Share of voice, not rank

All live bids together form the pot. A campaign's share of voice is its bid divided by the pot, and that ratio is exactly its probability of holding any given sponsored moment. Bid twice as much as everyone else combined and you hold about two thirds of the moments; bid a tenth of the pot and you still genuinely get your tenth. Delivery converges to share of voice over time, which is why a low bidder out of rotation this minute has not lost anything - it is receiving exactly the share it paid for.

The slate

When an editor asks for an ad, the server draws a slate of three slots, weighted by bid, with replacement. With replacement matters: a dominant bidder can hold two or even all three slots, because each slot is an independent draw. A slot is a draw, not a rank - slot one is not "first place". The slate is cached for about a minute, and the editor rotates through it every thirty seconds, never showing the same ad twice in a row.

First-price, on verified views only

When a sponsored line crosses the visibility threshold, the winning campaign pays its own current bid for that placement - not a discounted second price, and not a price we invent. Nothing bills on a draw alone: an ad that is drawn but never genuinely seen costs nothing. The exact visibility rule is in What counts as an impression, and the developer's cut of every charge is in The 70% split.

When nothing bids

If no campaign is eligible - an empty market, or every budget spent for the day - the auction is bypassed entirely and a house line serves instead. It bids nothing, bills nobody, pays nothing, and labels itself every time it appears: House ads and quiet markets.

If you are bidding

The practical side - what a bid buys, what the daily budget caps, and what the dashboard shows about the live market - is in Bidding and budgets.

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