Delivery boosts
A delivery boost is a one-off purchase, paid from your Onflow Ads wallet, that upgrades one campaign at the moment you submit it. It is not a subscription, it does not renew, and it applies to that campaign only.
Any plan can buy one, including Free. That is deliberate: delivery boosts exist so an occasional advertiser can put weight behind a single important campaign without committing to a monthly plan.
A delivery boost buys capacity (more placements, within the ceiling), priority (your ad is dispatched first when several are due at once) and, through Priority Review, speed of review. It never buys a placement that breaks a rule. Every host's content level, weekly limit, review setting and refusal binds a boosted ad exactly as it binds a free one, and no purchase lifts the 24-placements-per-cycle ceiling.
Before you start
- Wallet balance covering the total. The summary line on the form shows both, so you can see the shortfall before you press submit.
- A Broadcast campaign. Boosts do not apply to swaps, and a swap submission carrying one is refused.
- Headroom under the 24-placement ceiling. Every plan currently leaves room for the largest boost — the table below shows how much each one has.
The menu
The options appear on builder step 4, How it runs, under Delivery boost (optional). Each entry is labelled with its price and the placements it will actually add to this campaign — for example "Boost — $0.99 (+2 placements)".
| Option | Price | What it adds |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | Free | Your plan's included cadence — no charge |
| Boost | $0.99 | +2 placements this cycle, and earlier dispatch when the pool is busy |
| Premium Boost | $1.99 | +4 placements this cycle, and higher dispatch priority |
| Featured | $2.99 | +6 placements this cycle, top dispatch priority, and a star flag for reviewers |
Alongside the menu is a separate tick box:
| Add-on | Price | What it adds |
|---|---|---|
| Priority Review | $2.00 | Your submission is flagged for a reviewer to pick up first |
Priority Review rides on any option including Standard, so you can buy review speed without buying placements.
Step by step
- Open My advertisements, press Create an ad, and work through the first three steps as usual — the creative and its buttons on step 1, topic and level on step 2, the audience on step 3 (see Running ads).
- On step 4, How it runs, leave How should this run? on Broadcast.
- Open the Delivery boost menu and choose an option.
- Optionally tick Priority Review ($2.00).
- Read the summary line under the menu. It states what you are buying, the total, and your current balance: "+2 placements this cycle and higher priority · Priority Review — $2.99. Charged from your wallet ($12.40)."
- Press Submit for review. A confirmation appears: "This will charge $2.99 from your wallet for the delivery upgrade. Continue?" Confirm it.
- The charge and the campaign land in the same transaction. If the submission fails for any reason the charge rolls back with it — you are never charged for an ad that did not land.
The campaign row then carries a badge naming what you bought — with a star for Featured — and a ⚡ Priority pill if you added Priority Review.
Reading the summary line before you pay
The line is written to stop you buying something that will not fit. Three variants matter:
| Summary says | Meaning |
|---|---|
| "Standard cadence — no charge." | Nothing selected, nothing to pay |
| "+2 placements this cycle and higher priority · Priority Review — $2.99. Charged from your wallet ($12.40)." | What you picked, the total, and the balance it comes out of |
| "That's more than your balance — top up or choose Standard." | Your wallet is short. Add funds first, or submit on Standard |
The ceiling, and the promise not to sell you nothing
No campaign exceeds 24 placements per cycle. Your plan's included placements already occupy part of that budget; a boost can only fill what is left. A boost that would not fit in full is refused at submit time rather than quietly clipped, and nothing is charged when that happens — you are never sold a placement the ceiling would discard.
Today every plan leaves room for the largest boost:
| Plan | Included placements | Headroom for a boost | Largest boost that fits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | 7 | 17 | Featured |
| Lite | 9 | 15 | Featured |
| Plus | 11 | 13 | Featured |
| Elite | 13 | 11 | Featured |
| Master | 15 | 9 | Featured |
| Ultimate | 18 | 6 | Featured |
Boost placements are sold at face value, and the reliability haircut is applied when your ad is dispatched — to the whole placement count, bought placements included. On 75% or 50% reach a boost delivers proportionally less, and the money is spent either way. Check the reliability pill before buying, and see Rules and fair play.
What "priority" actually means
Priority is about order, not extra reach.
When more ads are due to be placed than there are suitable channels free at that moment, the exchange dispatches in priority order. A higher-priority ad is placed first; the others wait for the next opportunity. A boosted ad never exceeds any host's limits, never reaches a channel it was not eligible for, and never displaces an ad that is already live.
Your subscription plan carries dispatch priority of its own, and a boost adds to it — so a Featured campaign from a Free-plan member is dispatched ahead of an unboosted Free campaign.
What Priority Review actually does
Every submission becomes a card in a private moderation channel where a human presses Approve or Decline. Priority Review changes what that card looks like, not who decides or on what rules.
| What you bought | What the reviewer sees |
|---|---|
| Priority Review | The card is stamped ⚡ PRIORITY REVIEW — review first, and the re-post queue sorts it ahead of the free queue |
| Featured | The card carries ⭐ Featured paid delivery upgrade |
| An appeal on Elite and above | The appeal card is stamped ⚡ PRIORITY APPEAL (Elite+) |
Nothing in the exchange measures or enforces a review time. Priority Review moves your card up a queue a person works through; it is not a service-level guarantee, and no published review time is backed by code. Buy it to be looked at sooner, not to be looked at by a deadline.
Priority Review is the only thing that moves a submission up the moderation queue. Your subscription does not: the ladder used to carry a "priority review queue" benefit from Lite upward, but nothing was ever written to act on it, so it has been withdrawn rather than left to promise a speed-up that did not happen. That makes the $2 add-on worth the same to every plan — a Free account and an Ultimate account both start in the same queue, and both move up it only by buying this. (The Elite+ appeal stamp in the table above is a different thing: it marks an appeal card, not a new submission.)
You can tell it took: the submission confirmation reads "You're in the priority review queue." only when Priority Review was actually bought, and Why? on a pending campaign adds "Priority Review is on, so your card is flagged for the reviewer to pick up first." Without it the confirmation is the plain one — "You'll hear back by email and on Telegram."
Refunds
| Situation | What happens to the charge |
|---|---|
| Your ad is declined in review | Refunded to your wallet automatically |
| You cancel before any placement delivered | Refunded to your wallet automatically, and the reply names the refund's OFT- reference |
| You cancel mid-cycle, after at least one placement ran | Forfeited — the boost was partly used |
| An appeal re-approves a declined ad | The ad runs on its standard cadence. The boost was already refunded at decline, so it is not reinstated |
| The cycle finishes normally | Spent, as intended |
A refund restores the exact split of your wallet balance that was spent — the promotional, non-withdrawable portion goes back as promotional balance and the cash portion as cash. Each charge can be refunded only once, whichever path the campaign took.
Rules and edge cases
- Broadcast only. Choosing Swap hides the boost menu and clears any selection, and a swap submission carrying an upgrade is refused: "Delivery upgrades apply to pool campaigns, not swaps."
- One boost per campaign. Boosts are chosen at submit time. You cannot add one to a running campaign, and you cannot stack two.
- Independent of your subscription. Any plan can buy any boost, and its placements are bounded only by the 24 ceiling — never by your plan's own cadence. They are stored in a separate column for exactly that reason.
- A boost does not lift a rules gate. It cannot reach a channel your level or targeting excluded, and it cannot outrun a host's weekly cap.
- The star is for reviewers only. Nobody hosting or reading your ad sees anything different.
If something goes wrong
| What you see | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| "The Boost delivery upgrade costs $0.99 and your wallet is short. Top up, or submit on the included Standard cadence at no charge." | Not enough balance | Top up, or submit on Standard |
| "Delivery upgrades apply to pool campaigns, not swaps." | A boost was attached to a swap | Set the menu back to Standard and untick Priority Review |
| "That delivery option isn't available." | An unrecognised option reached the server | Re-pick from the menu |
| You were charged but see no campaign | This cannot happen — the charge and the campaign are one transaction | If your wallet shows a debit with no campaign, contact support with the OFT- reference from your wallet ledger |
| The campaign delivered fewer placements than the boost promised | Reliability haircut, or a targeting filter starving the cycle | Press Why? on the row. See Targeting |
Frequently asked
Does a boost make my ad reach channels it otherwise could not?
No. It gives your ad more placements within the pool it was already eligible for, and dispatches it earlier when the pool is contended. Eligibility is decided by your level, topic and targeting — never by what you paid.
My ad was declined and I had paid for Featured. Do I get it back?
Yes, automatically, to your wallet — no claim needed. If you fix the ad and submit again, you choose and pay for a boost again on the new submission.
Is a boost worth it on a campaign that is already under-delivering?
No. If the Why? diagnostic shows a small Matching channels count, the pool is your constraint and more placements have nowhere to go. Widen the targeting first — that costs nothing.
Related
- Running ads — builder step 4 in context.
- The Delivery Floor — what the Ultimate plan pays back when a cycle under-delivers.
- Plans, tiers and limits — the included cadence a boost sits on top of.