What counts as an impression

An impression only bills - and only pays - after the sponsored line was provably on screen. The rule is short, both sides of the market are measured by it, and everything that cannot be proven simply does not count.

The rule

A verified impression requires all of the following at once, for a cumulative 5 seconds:

• the line is rendered on a surface you enabled,
• your agent is genuinely thinking,
• the window showing the line is focused and on screen (the terminal is the exception below).

Lose focus, and the clock stops. The agent pauses on a permission prompt, and the clock stops. Minimize the window, and the clock stops. If any part of the picture is unknown, the time is not counted - the contract's rule is that uncertainty never bills. An ad shown to a minimized window is not an impression, the advertiser is not charged for it, and a developer is never paid for one. Both sides are measured by the same rule.

The terminal is the exception: it cannot observe a window, so it counts time only from your agent actively redrawing its status line - each redraw is a verified render tick - and terminal views carry the lowest price on the rate card for exactly that reason.

"Rendered" means painted, not attempted

On the surfaces drawn inside Claude Code's panel, the render is reported at the moment the line is actually placed on screen - not when Awaitful decides to show one. Those are different moments: if the spot the line attaches to is not there, placement stops and no impression is reported at all. A render that did not happen cannot bill.

The same applies across windows. If you have Claude Code open in two editors at once, both can be showing the same line, and each is one view - a second window cannot add its seconds to the first window's clock. Each impression counts the time from the one place that painted it.

Counted once, however unreliable the network

Every event carries a random identifier, and the server treats that identifier as the truth: a duplicate report of the same event is recognized and dropped, the server applies its own receipt timestamps rather than trusting the client's clock, and the visible time a client reports is capped server-side. A flaky connection can delay an event; it cannot double it.

Clicks

A click on the sponsored line bills the advertiser a multiple of that placement's impression price, and your 70% share applies to it identically. Clicks only bill on surfaces that can verify them; the terminal renders its line as a normal terminal hyperlink, so terminal clicks are never billed or tracked.

What this buys you

The strict rule is the product. Advertisers pay only for genuine attention, which is what makes the marketplace worth bidding in; developers earn from verified impressions of paying campaigns, which is what makes the credit real. When a line passes the rule but nothing is credited, every honest reason is listed in Shown but not credited.