Advertising in outlol
Every surface in this world is bought at open auction from $2, held for 30 days, and painted into the scene rather than laid over it. This is what is for sale, what it costs and what happens to your money.
What a surface is
A surface is a piece of the world that carries your creative, drawn into the scene rather than laid over it. There is no banner between a player and the pitch, and there is no pop-up: what you buy is painted on the ground, the hoardings or the building, and a player sees it the way they see advertising at a real ground.
Around a pitch
- Four hoardings — the LED boards at the touchlines, read by everybody in the match for the whole match. Your message runs along them or stands still, at a pace you choose.
- Four stands — the banners hung across the seating, seen from inside the match and from the map above it.
- The centre circle — the ground the ball is kicked off from, and the one surface every player looks at every time a goal is scored.
- The stadium wrap — the outside of the building. It is the only surface visible from the map without entering the match, which makes it the one a passer-by sees.
Around the world
- Satellites — up to 24 of them, in a ring around the planet on the screen everybody lands on. Seen on every visit, before any field is chosen.
- City parcels — the ground of one block in the city the fields stand in, read from above.
- The season — one buyer's name on the season itself, carried wherever the season is written.
How the auction works
There is no rate card and nothing to negotiate. Every surface in the world is sold the same way, by open auction, and the current price of anything is on the sponsors board.
- Every surface opens at $2. A hoarding on a busy field and a hoarding on a quiet one start at the same number; what a surface is worth is settled by who wants it, not by us.
- A held surface is taken by beating its standing bid by $2. Bids rise in $2 steps and the higher bid takes the surface at once. There is no auction to wait out and no closing time to watch.
- A surface is held for 30 days. The term starts when you take it and runs whether or not anybody bids against you.
- What you paid stays as credit. When somebody outbids you, the money you put on that surface is held against it for the rest of that term. Coming back costs the difference, not the whole price again.
That last rule is the point of the market. An auction where losing costs you everything is one people enter once. Here the only thing an outbid costs you is the position, so a surface can be fought over for months by the same two buyers and neither of them is paying twice for the same ground.
What it can cost
Every surface has a ceiling. A bidding war has an end, and a buyer can read the worst case before they start rather than discover it.
| Surface | Opens at | Ceiling |
|---|---|---|
| Hoarding | $2 | $100 |
| Stand banner | $2 | $200 |
| Centre circle | $2 | $500 |
| Stadium wrap | $2 | $500 |
| City parcel | $2 | $100 |
| Satellite | $2 | $800 |
| Season | $2 | $2500 |
Who gets paid
30% of what is paid for a surface on a field goes to whoever hosts that field. Somebody who opens a room and keeps it worth playing in is the reason the surface is worth anything, and they are paid for it automatically, in credit, without asking. Surfaces on the world itself — the satellites, the parcels, the season — have no host and pay no share.
What you supply
A link is the only thing a surface cannot go without. Everything else is optional and has a sensible default:
- Your link. The surface opens it, and the brand name and the mark on your creative are read from it.
- A title and a line, if you want words of your own rather than your domain.
- A picture, if you have one. It is cut to the shape of the surface you are buying while you watch, and you choose what part of it survives the crop.
- A face — the colour your words stand on, when you have no picture.
Whatever you write appears on the surface itself as you type it, out in the world behind the form, so what you approve is what ships.
What is not accepted
A surface points at a public web address and nothing else. A link on any other scheme, or one naming a private or local host, is refused when you place the bid rather than after your money has moved.
Beyond that: a creative that impersonates somebody, misleads about what is behind the link, or carries material a general audience should not meet is taken down and the position is released back to the market. Nobody who plays here chose to see advertising, which is the whole reason that line is where it is.