Terms of service

What Sponsor Slot is

Sponsor Slot is a marketplace where website owners (sellers) place a sponsor wall of seats on pages they control, and advertisers (buyers) request and pay for those seats. Sponsor Slot is not a party to the sponsorship itself: the agreement is between the buyer and the seller, on the terms shown before payment.

Sponsor Slot is operated by Ashutosh Bhandari, an individual. Questions about these terms go through support.

Accounts

You sign in with a one-time code sent to your email address. You are responsible for that mailbox. One account can both buy and sell. Operators may remove listings, accounts or content that break these terms or the law.

Buyers can be anywhere. Sellers are paid through Stripe Connect, and for now can be based only in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Switzerland, or a country of the European Economic Area other than Iceland. We will add countries as our payment provider supports them.

Listings

A seller may list only websites they control, proved by installing the wall on the website, by a DNS record, or, by exception, an operator’s review. Traffic figures are labelled Self-reported or Evidence reviewed and are never a guarantee of future traffic, impressions or results. Every listing is reviewed by an operator before it is published, and changes to a published listing go through the same review.

Buying a seat

Each wall is sold one of two ways, chosen by its seller and shown on the seat before you pay.

Sponsor seat.

• A seat carries one published price. Claiming one is free and private, and does not reserve it.
• A seat is exclusive to one sponsor, and has no end date: it is held until somebody pays to take it.
• Anybody may take an occupied seat by paying twice what its current sponsor paid. The seller sets only the opening price; every sale doubles it.
• Each website sets a refund window of 7, 14, 21 or 30 days, shown before payment and fixed on the booking when it is made. A sponsor displaced inside their window is refunded in full, funded by the payment that displaced them. A sponsor displaced at or after it is not refunded: the run is complete and the seller keeps the payment. Being displaced inside the window is the only refund that is automatic.

Ad.

• A seat carries one weekly price. You choose 1, 2, 3 or 4 weeks (a month is 4 weeks) and pay the weekly price times the weeks, once.
• Nobody can take an Ad from you. It runs for exactly the term you bought and then ends on its own; the seat opens again.
• If the seat is taken when you pay, your term starts the moment the current one ends. To keep a seat, buy the next term the same way.
• An Ad has no refund window, because nothing can displace it. If the seller does not run it, you are refunded as the refunds and payouts policy describes.

Both.

• Nothing is reserved before payment. Where two buyers pay for the same seat and time, the first confirmed payment takes it and the other is refunded in full.
• For a website that has not listed here, a seller may still issue versioned offers; the buyer may accept only the newest unexpired one, and an accepted offer is held for up to 24 hours while they pay.
• A booking is confirmed only when the payment provider confirms the payment.

Fees and payment

There is no listing fee and no fee to send a request. When a booking is paid, Sponsor Slot keeps a platform fee of 15% of the agreed price and transfers the remainder to the seller’s connected Stripe account. Payments are processed by Stripe; Sponsor Slot never holds card or bank details. Payouts, refunds and disputes are governed by the refunds and payouts policy.

Delivery

The seller installs the agreed creative, or enables the managed sponsorship embed, for as long as the sponsor holds the seat, and submits launch and completion evidence. An operator checks that evidence. Installation detection and click counts are supporting information, not proof of impressions or of results.

Content rules

Buyers must own or have the right to use the creative they submit, and must not advertise anything illegal, deceptive or that the seller has excluded in the listing’s restrictions. Sellers may decline any request. Sponsored placements carry a visible sponsorship label and arel="sponsored" link.

Liability

Sponsor Slot provides the marketplace as is. To the extent the law allows, Sponsor Slot is not liable for the performance of any sponsorship, the availability of any website, or indirect or consequential loss. Nothing here limits liability that cannot be limited by law.

Changes

These terms may change. Material changes are announced in the product before they take effect, and continuing to use it after that is acceptance of the new terms.