Sponsor Terms

1.About these terms

These terms apply when you create a sponsor profile, add funds to a sponsor wallet, place a bid, or run an ad on Deftro. Deftro runs the service and is the other party to these terms. They add to the Terms of use, which still apply. Every ad must also follow the Ad Policy.

You must accept this version of the Sponsor Terms before your first bid. We record the version you accepted and when.

2.What you are buying

You bid for one Sponsored placement for one fixed period, called a slot. A slot lasts 7 or 30 days and starts and ends at midnight UTC. Each placement is a named place on the site, such as a banner on Discover.

• Every Sponsored placement shows the word “Sponsored”.
• Its links are marked as sponsored for search engines.
• A page shows at most one Sponsored placement.
• You buy space for an ad. You do not buy a ranking, a review outcome or any other change to the product.

3.Your sponsor profile

To sponsor, you create a profile as a company or a person, with a display name, a website, a country and a billing email. Keep it accurate. Your display name and the amount of each bid you place are shown to signed-in people on the slot's bid board. Your wallet balance is never shown to other sponsors or the public; Deftro staff can see it to run the wallet.

4.The wallet

Sponsoring is prepaid. You add funds to your wallet, and you bid from it. Amounts are in one currency, shown on every amount, and kept in whole minor units (for example, cents).

• Available — money you can bid with.
• Locked — money held by a bid that is still in an open auction. You cannot spend it elsewhere.

Every movement of money is written to your wallet history: deposits, locks, unlocks, charges, refunds and staff adjustments. Entries are never edited or deleted; a correction is a new entry. No payment provider is connected yet; when one is, it will handle your card or bank details. Deftro does not store full card numbers.

You can ask for your available (unlocked) balance to be paid back. Deftro staff handle these requests by hand. The wallet does not earn interest.

5.Bidding

• When — bidding for a slot opens 14 days before it starts and closes 48 hours before it starts. The gap leaves time to upload your ad and for us to review it.
• Floor and minimum raise — each placement has a lowest bid and a smallest step between bids. Both are shown on the slot before you bid.
• Bids are final — you cannot withdraw or cancel a bid once it is placed.
• Locking — a bid locks its full amount in your wallet. You need enough available balance to place it. Raising your own leading bid locks only the difference.
• Outbid — when someone outbids you, your locked amount is unlocked at once and becomes available again. We tell you when this happens.
• Ties and timing — if two bids are equal, the earlier one wins. Our server clock decides the order and the closing time. A bid that arrives after bidding closes is refused.
• Late bids extend the close — a bid placed in the last 5 minutes moves the close 5 minutes later. This can happen at most 12 times per auction.

6.Winning and settlement

When bidding closes, the highest bid wins. Only the winner is charged: their locked amount becomes a charge. Every other bid is unlocked. We settle each auction once, and tell the winner and the other bidders the result.

If nobody bids on a slot, nobody is charged, and the placement shows nothing for that period. No other ad stands in for it.

7.Your ad and its review

If you win, you upload an ad for the slot: an image, a banner or a short video, with a headline, an optional short line of text and an https landing page. The ad must follow the Ad Policy. If you promote an artifact, it must already be public and approved in review.

A Deftro moderator reviews every ad before it shows. Nothing shows until it is approved. You can replace your ad later; the replacement goes back to review. Approval means a moderator checked the ad against the Ad Policy. It is not a promise that the ad, the landing page or a promoted artifact is correct, fit for a purpose, or free of risk.

Sponsors cannot buy a review. Paying for a slot has no effect on whether, how fast or how favourably any artifact is reviewed, and an ad never counts as a review of anything. The rail placement also shows on desktop screens only, prints your sponsor name instead of your headline and text, and cannot link to an artifact or to an install or download.

8.Takedown

A moderator can take a live ad down, with a reason. Reasons include a breach of the Ad Policy, a landing page that changed after review, or a complaint we must act on. We tell you when your ad is taken down and why.

9.Refunds

Refunds go back to your wallet. “Pro-rata” means the share of the slot's price for the days your ad could not show.

• Your ad is rejected for breaking the Ad Policy — no refund.
• Your live ad is taken down for breaking the Ad Policy — no refund.
• We do not review your ad before the slot starts — pro-rata refund of the days your ad could not show, if you sent it before the slot started.
• You send your ad after the slot starts, or not at all — no refund.
• We take your ad down without a policy breach — pro-rata refund of the unused days.
• Staff void your bid — the locked amount is released in full.
• A placement is switched off during its auction — every locked bid is released in full.
• You are outbid, or you lose — your locked amount is released at once.
• Your available balance — paid back on request, as described under The wallet.

10.Placements that are switched off

Deftro staff can switch a placement off at any time. When that happens:

• no new slots or auctions open for it;
• every locked bid on its open auctions is released in full, and each bidder is told;
• slots that are already live run to their end;
• it no longer appears to sponsors or on public pages.

11.Suspended or restricted accounts

If your account is suspended or restricted while an auction is open, your bids in it are voided and your money is unlocked. The next-highest bid then leads. Each step is recorded in our staff activity.

12.No influence on rankings

Money buys only the labelled Sponsored placement. The leaderboard, Trending, Top today, recommendations, search ranking and the sitemap never read sponsorship data. Sponsoring does not change whether an artifact passes review, and a sponsored artifact is never shown as if it were an organic result.

13.Impressions and clicks

You can see how many times your ad was shown and clicked, per day. The counts are best effort: we filter out repeats and abuse, so they may differ from your own figures. We do not promise any number of impressions, clicks or results. You never see who saw or clicked your ad.

14.What you agree to

• You have the right to use everything in your ad, including names, logos, images and video.
• Your ad and landing page follow the Ad Policy and the law where you operate.
• You do not change the landing page into something different after it is reviewed.
• You do not try to get around bidding rules, for example with several accounts.

15.Liability

The Sponsored service is provided as is. We aim to show every approved ad for its whole slot, but we do not promise the site will be available without interruption. Where an ad could not show because of us, the refund rules above apply.

As far as the law allows, Deftro's total liability for a slot is limited to the amount you were charged for it. You are responsible for claims that arise from your ad or your landing page.

16.Changes to these terms

When these terms change, we publish a new version with a new date on this page. You must accept the new version before your next bid. Bids already placed stay under the version you accepted.

17.Governing law and contact

Deftro will name the law that governs these terms, and where disputes are heard, in this section before real payments open. Until then, a wallet cannot take real money.

Questions about these terms, a refund request, or a complaint about an ad: sales@baton-vault.vercel.app.