Prices and Offers
Your rate card is the product. This page covers what you sell and at what price: the formats on offer, the one paid extra you can switch on top of them, how to price all of it, the two automatic pricing tools, the discounts you fund yourself, and the flash deals you can run.
For everything about when your channel can be booked — lead time, blackout dates, auto-accept — see Managing your availability.
Before you start
- A published listing. Prices are set in the wizard, which needs a channel in your pool; the tuning controls need a LIVE listing.
- Know which of the two screens you are on, because only one of them costs you a re-verification.
| Screen | How to open it | What it holds | Re-verifies on save? |
|---|---|---|---|
| The listing wizard | Manage listing on your owner desk, or Edit pricing & rules → on the listing manager | Prices, which formats you offer, whether you offer the pin, buyer perks, accepted and prohibited topics, the turnaround label | Yes — subject to the re-verification cooldown |
| The listing manager | The 📊 Manage channel button on the verification message; see The listing manager | Dynamic pricing, spotlight deals, category sponsorship, booking lead time, auto-accept, blackout dates | No — every change saves instantly on a live listing |
The practical rule: anything that changes what you sell goes through the wizard; anything that tunes a live listing does not.
The placement formats
A format is a promise about two things: how long the ad is the newest post in your channel, and how long it stays in the feed afterwards.
"1 hour at the top" means the ad is the newest post in the channel for that hour — you publish nothing else in that window, so anyone who opens the channel sees it first. It is not a pinned message, and nothing pins it.
Pinning is a bigger, separately priced promise: the Pinned for the whole campaign extra below. If you want to be paid for pinning, switch it on. If you do not offer it, no ad in your channel is ever pinned by Onflow Ads.
| Format | What the buyer gets | Newest post for | Promised time in feed |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 hour at the top · 24 hours in feed | The newest post for a full hour, then a day in the feed | 60 minutes | 24 hours |
| 2 hours at the top · 48 hours in feed | Two hours as the newest post, then two days in the feed | 120 minutes | 48 hours |
| 3 hours at the top · 72 hours in feed | Three hours with nothing posted after it, then three days in the feed — maximum dwell time | 180 minutes | 72 hours |
| Native · 7 days in feed · 1 hour at the top | A softer, longer-lived placement: an hour as the newest post, then a week quietly in the feed | 60 minutes | 7 days |
Three consequences worth internalising:
- The promised duration is also your payout clock. On the Free plan escrow releases once the promised in-feed duration has run from delivery, so a 7-day native placement holds money seven times longer than a 24-hour one. Paid plans cap that wait — see Escrow and getting paid.
- Every one of these four formats carries a policed opening window, native included. It is checked once, retrospectively, after the window closes, and posting over the ad inside it costs 0.40 reliability. See the exclusivity sweep.
- Nothing in the four formats asks you to pin anything. If you want a pin sold, switch the extra on.
The 1 hour at the top · 24 hours in feed slot is compulsory; the other three you switch on or off as you like.
Placement prices are stored as whole US dollars, with a $1 floor on the required "1 hour at the top · 24 hours in feed" slot and a $1,000,000 ceiling on any format. A suggestion of $12.37 would be a number you could not save, so nothing ever offers one.
The pin — "Pinned for the whole campaign"
One paid extra exists, we price it, and it is the only way a pin is sold on Paid Promotions.
What the buyer reads on your rate card: "The ad is pinned in the channel from the moment it goes live until the campaign ends — so it stays at the top even after the owner posts again. Unpinned automatically when the run finishes."
Switching it on
It lives in the wizard's pricing step (step 2), directly under the four format rows, as a single row headed Pinned for the whole campaign with its own switch. There is no price box: the rate is the platform's, the same on every channel, and the row states both numbers before you touch it —
Worth $5.00 a placement — you receive $4.00 after our $1.00 fee
That is deliberate. Your rate card is unchanged; this is money on top of it, and you should know what lands in your wallet before you agree rather than after.
Once saved it also appears, read-only, on the Rate card panel of your listing manager.
| Rule | Shipped value |
|---|---|
| What it is worth | $5.00 a placement — fixed, and not yours to edit |
| What the buyer pays | $6.00 — $5 plus a $1 platform charge on their side |
| What reaches you | $4.00 — $5 minus our $1 fee on yours |
| Who has to agree | Both of you. You offer it; each buyer accepts it per booking |
Unlike your rate card, this one is the platform's. If it changes, every screen changes with it — and a booking already taken keeps the numbers it was taken at. What you were promised on the day is what you are paid.
The one prerequisite
@OnflowAdsBot must be able to pin in the channel, and the switch is not called "Pin Messages". In a channel, pinning is granted by Manage Messages → Edit Messages of Others — can_pin_messages is a groups-only right that Telegram does not report for channels at all. A channel added before this extra existed will very often have the first and not the second.
The check runs live at the moment you switch the extra on, and only then. If the bot cannot pin, the save is refused:
Our bot can't pin in @yourchannel yet, so this can't be offered there. Open the channel's admin settings, give the bot Manage Messages → "Edit Messages of Others", then switch this back on.
A check that cannot be run at all — Telegram unreachable from our side — is allowed through rather than blocking your edit.
What it costs the buyer, and what it pays you
- It is a fixed dollar amount, not a percentage, and it is added after every percentage lever on the cart: your own discounts, the volume tier and promo codes have all been applied before it lands. No percentage is ever charged on top of a pin fee.
- It is charged per placement. Two slots booked in your channel with the pin on is two pins and two fees.
- Your $4.00 is added to your payout for that booking, and it is withdrawable on exactly the same terms as the rest of it — same hold, same claim, same payout speed. There is no separate wallet and no separate rule.
- Asking for the pin on a listing that does not offer it does not silently downgrade the booking — the checkout is refused.
- It does not touch the opening hours. A
1/24still promises one hour as the newest post whether or not the pin was bought; the two ride together, and neither shortens or extends the other.
What you then owe
Nothing manual. Onflow Ads applies the pin itself, on both delivery routes, and releases it when the run ends. Your obligation is simply not to unpin it early — see Posting the ad.
A booking that bought the pin carries a gold line under its payout on the bookings queue — 📌 pinned for the whole campaign · incl. $4.00 — and the Telegram card you accept from names the same promise and the same figure. The platform does the pinning and the unpinning; unpinning it early is exactly the thing the monitor flags — normally within about ten minutes.
What happens if you unpin it early
The platform pins and unpins for you, so the only way this goes wrong is if you take the pin down by hand before the campaign ends. The delivery monitor checks, and it is the one thing on the rate card with a money consequence attached.
Confirmed across two separate passes about five minutes apart — one unreadable check never triggers anything — the settlement is:
| When | ||
|---|---|---|
| The advertiser gets back | $6.00 — the whole pin price, not just your share, as non-withdrawable wallet balance | When the campaign finishes, or within 48 hours — whichever is sooner |
| You receive of the pin | Nothing. The $4.00 is unearned | Straight away |
| You additionally owe | $2.00 — our fee, which we are returning on your behalf | Straight away |
| Reliability | −0.75 | Only if the run ends with the ad still unpinned |
The $6.00 is taken out of that booking's payout, which the platform is still holding when the breach is caught — so in the ordinary case it never touches your wallet. Only if the payout cannot cover it does the shortfall fall through to your balance, and only then can it put you in debt.
The reliability mark is not recorded when we catch the unpin. The campaign is still running, so whether you kept the pin is still an open question — and you can still answer it.
Re-pin the post and leave it pinned until the run ends, and no mark is ever recorded. We confirm a re-pin on two consecutive readings, exactly as we confirm the unpin, so a pin flicked back on for a single check does not count. Take it down again and the mark goes back on the table — with no further charge, because the pin was already returned in full.
What a re-pin does not do is give the money back. You were paid to keep a pin and there was a stretch of the campaign where it was not there; that part is settled when we confirm it, and it is not reversed by putting the pin back. See Reliability score.
Your ad stays up, the advertiser keeps the placement they booked, and it pays out as normal. Only the pin is reversed — which is why this is lighter than the penalty for removing a post entirely.
If Telegram refused our pin — almost always because the bot does not hold Edit Messages of Others — that is recorded at delivery as our failure. The monitor re-attempts it and never charges you, on either delivery route. The same is true of the unpin the platform performs itself when a run ends.
The suggestion panel
The wizard's pricing step carries a Suggested pricing panel that explains where its number came from:
- Peer-based — with at least three comparable channels in your category, the suggestion is the median of what those peers charge per thousand subscribers, scaled to your own count. A median rather than a mean, so one $500 outlier in a thin category cannot poison it. The note reads "Learned from what similar channels in your category charge."
- Reach-based — with fewer comparables than that, it is extrapolated from your own reach, and the note says so: "Not enough comparable channels in your category yet — this is estimated from your reach. Expect to adjust it."
- Surge — when your category is booking unusually hot, a percentage is added and the reason is named in green, for example "20% added — this category is booking 2.4 placements per channel a week."
The panel's note and its surge line render, but no suggested price appears beside them, and pressing Apply suggestions fills nothing in. Treat the panel as commentary: it tells you the basis and the surge reason, and you set every figure on the rate card yourself.
Dynamic pricing
The Dynamic pricing panel on the listing manager lets your prices track demand automatically.
- Tick Track demand automatically.
- Set the band: Swing at most ± N %, from 5 to 50.
- Press Save. The message confirms: "Dynamic pricing is on — your price tracks demand within ±N%."
How it behaves:
- Your prices at the moment you switch it on are saved as an immutable base. Turning it off restores that base exactly — "Dynamic pricing is off — your set prices are restored."
- A background pass re-prices your formats to the base multiplied by a demand factor, worked out from how heavily the next 14 days are booked. A half-full fortnight resolves to your base price; a full one adds the whole band; an empty one subtracts it.
- Every result is clamped to the platform's price band, so a wide swing on a low base can never push a format under $1.
- Prices are written straight into your listing, so the cart, the rate card and the marketplace can never disagree about what a slot costs.
The base snapshot is immutable, so whatever the demand factor has done to your prices, unticking the box puts them back exactly as you set them.
Buyer perks
Perks are standing discounts you fund out of your own price to win specific buyers. They live in the wizard's Rules step, under "Buyer perks — your offer, moves your payout too".
| Perk | Who qualifies |
|---|---|
| Repeat buyers | An advertiser with a prior booking on this listing that reached accepted or completed |
| First-time buyers | An advertiser with no such prior booking on this listing |
The wizard offers Off, −5%, −10% or −15% for each. New listings start at −10% repeat and −5% first-time.
Rules the panel does not spell out:
- Perks never stack with each other. A buyer qualifies for at most one, and the highest-percentage qualifying perk is the one that applies.
- "Repeat" is per listing, not per account. A buyer who has booked your other channel is a first-time buyer here.
- The discount comes off the price, so it comes off your payout too. The booking card always shows the payout you will actually receive.
- Having perks enabled earns points toward your Standing score — 3 points each. See Promoting your listing.
Spotlight deals
A Spotlight is a limited-time flash discount on one format, shown to advertisers on the marketplace spotlight rail. It is the fastest lever you have for filling a quiet week.
From the ⚡ Spotlight deal panel on the listing manager:
- Choose the Format — the dropdown lists your priced formats with their current prices.
- Set the Discount %, from 10 to 80.
- Set Runs (hours) — from 1 hour to 14 days.
- Check the live preview: "Buyers pay
$40$28". - Press Launch spotlight. The panel then shows the running deal, its
OFPS-reference and End early.
What your plan changes:
| Plan | Days between spotlights on one channel | Spotlights running at once, across all your channels |
|---|---|---|
| Free | 5 | 1 |
| Lite | 4 | 1 |
| Plus | 3 | 2 |
| Elite | 2 | 2 |
| Master | 1 | 3 |
| Ultimate | none | 5 |
- Only a live listing can run a spotlight — "Only a verified, live channel can run a spotlight."
- Only a priced format can carry one — "That format isn't priced on this channel."
- One live spotlight per channel, enforced by the database: a second is refused with "A spotlight is already running on this channel."
- Inside the cooldown the panel reads "Your next spotlight unlocks on …" with the date, and the refusal names your plan's interval.
- A new spotlight is fresh — top of the marketplace rail — for its first 36 hours, which is when most of its traffic arrives.
A −10% spotlight that lands at the top of the rail for 36 hours often outsells a −40% one launched into a cooldown you had forgotten about. Check the "N slots available" figure and the cooldown date before you decide how deep to cut.
How a buyer's price is actually built
Useful when a booking's payout is not your list price. Two kinds of discount behave completely differently.
Your own offers move both sides. A spotlight and a buyer perk are your decision to sell cheaper, so each one reduces the buyer's charge and your payout by the same percentage. They are summed and capped together at 90%.
The platform's own offers come out of the marketplace fee. The lifetime-funding volume discount, promo codes and curated-bundle discounts are Onflow Ads's marketing spend. They reduce the buyer's charge only, and they are floored at your payout — once the charge would fall below what you are owed, the discount stops there. Your payout is never used to fund a platform campaign.
On top of that, in this order:
- The pin extra, if the buyer took it, is added last of all — a flat dollar amount, per placement, added to both the charge and your payout. It sits after every percentage lever deliberately, so no percentage is ever charged on top of a fixed fee.
- The marketplace fee is applied to the placement price, at one rate on both sides: the standard rate is 9%, so the advertiser is quoted your price plus 9% and you receive your price minus 9%. Once one of your channels has completed 100 clean campaigns, the veteran rate is 7% on your side instead; an advertiser earns the same rate on their side after 100 clean placements, and neither side's rate depends on the other's. See Escrow and getting paid.
If a booking pays you more than your rate card says, the usual reason is the pin extra. It is added to your payout, which is why it makes the number move in the direction people do not expect.
Every booking request shows the result plainly: "you receive $X" with "after N% fee" underneath. That number is fixed when the booking is priced and does not move afterwards — there is no counter-offer; your rate card is the price.
If something goes wrong
| What you see | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| "Set a price for the required 1h top · 24h feed format." | The mandatory slot is empty or below $1 | Price it; it cannot be switched off |
| "Our bot can't pin in @… yet, so this can't be offered there." | You switched a pin product on, and the live check found the bot cannot pin | Grant Manage Messages → Edit Messages of Others in the channel's admin settings, then switch the extra back on |
| The pin extra saved but shows Not offered on your rate card | Its price was zero, negative or above the $500 ceiling, so it stored as switched off | Re-open the wizard and give it a price between $1 and $500 |
| Apply suggestions fills nothing | The panel is commentary, not an autofill | Type your prices by hand; read the panel's note for the reasoning |
| "Only a verified, live channel can run a spotlight." | The listing is pending, paused or a draft | Get it verified first |
| "That format isn't priced on this channel." | You picked a format with no price | Price it in the wizard, or spotlight a different one |
| "A spotlight is already running on this channel." | One live spotlight per channel | End the current one early, or wait for it to expire |
| "You can run the next spotlight on … Your plan allows one spotlight per channel every N days." | You are inside your plan's cooldown | Wait for the date, or move up a plan |
| "You already have N spotlights running and your plan allows N at a time." | Your concurrency across all channels is used up | End one early, or wait |
| "That discount would make the placement free — lower it." | The discount reduces the price to nothing | Discounts run 10–80% |
Related
- The listing manager — where dynamic pricing and spotlights live, and how to reach it.
- Managing your availability — lead time, blackout dates and auto-accept.
- Promoting your listing — Standing, sponsorship and the analytics that tell you whether the price is the problem.
- Escrow and getting paid — how the format you price decides when you are paid.
- Posting the ad — what the opening window and the pin extra actually oblige you to do.
- Your public channel page — where a stranger reads the rate card you just built.