Buy inventory. Sell surfaces. The auction clears.
Two-sided marketplace with a second-price auction engine across 9 inventory surface types. Four creative formats, six targeting dimensions, and revenue share on every filled impression.
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inventory surface types across the Calisto network
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targeting dimensions per ad group
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creative formats (image, video, audio, native)
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routes in the Ads application
Buyers bid. Sellers earn. The auction clears.
Calisto Ads is a first-party advertising marketplace built into the Calisto platform. Advertisers create campaigns and bid on inventory across 9 surface types. Surface owners register their screens, channels, websites, and storefronts, then collect revenue share on every impression the auction fills.
Buyers
- Create campaigns with awareness, traffic, or conversion objectives
- Upload image, video, audio, and native creatives for review
- Set CPM, CPC, or flat-rate bids and daily or total budget caps
- Target by surface type, geography, vertical, content category, daypart, and audience segment
- Track impressions, clicks, conversions, CTR, CPA, and ROAS per campaign
Sellers
- Register ad surfaces on any Calisto product that serves inventory
- Set minimum CPM floor, ad density (light, standard, aggressive), and blocked categories
- Earn revenue share on every filled impression, with splits that vary by surface type
- Monitor fill rate, eCPM, and daily earnings with payout tracking
- Manage multiple surfaces from a single seller dashboard
Campaign wizard. Four creative types. Six targeting dimensions.
The campaign builder walks advertisers through a five-step wizard: objective, budget, targeting, creatives, and review. Campaigns contain ad groups with bid adjustments, and each group can hold multiple creatives.
Choose awareness, traffic, or conversions. The objective shapes bid strategy defaults and reporting metrics.
Set CPM, CPC, or flat-rate bids. Configure daily budget cap, total budget cap, and flight dates (start/end).
Select surface types, geos (country codes), verticals, content categories, dayparts, and audience segments. AND between dimensions, OR within.
Upload image, video, audio, or native listing creatives. Each creative goes through approval review (pending, approved, rejected).
Validate bid amount, budget allocation, and flight dates. Launch puts the campaign into Pending Review, then Active.
Creative Types
Slot request. Targeting filter. Second-price clearing.
Five-stage pipeline per ad request. Surface sends a slot, engine filters by six dimensions, creatives match by format, second-price auction clears, decision returns with tracking URLs.
Register surfaces. Set floors. Collect revenue share.
Any Calisto subscriber who operates a surface (a digital screen, a TV channel, a website, a storefront) can register it as ad inventory. Sellers control the minimum CPM floor, ad density, and blocked categories. Revenue share is calculated per impression and varies by surface type.
Surface Registration
Register any Calisto surface as ad inventory. Configure surface type, name, and location. Set minimum CPM floor and ad density preference (light, standard, aggressive).
Blocked Categories
Maintain a per-surface blocklist. Creatives from blocked categories are filtered out before they enter the auction for that surface.
Revenue Share
Earn a percentage of every filled impression. Share rates vary by surface type, from 50% on Display up to 80% on Direct storefronts.
Earnings Dashboard
Track gross revenue, seller share, fill rate, and average eCPM per surface. Daily breakdown with period-over-period comparison.
Payout Pipeline
Payouts move through pending, processing, and completed stages. Configure payout method: credit card, bank transfer, or Calisto Wallet.
Multi-Surface Management
Run multiple surfaces from one seller account. Each surface has independent settings, floor prices, density controls, and blocklists.
| Surface | Seller | Calisto |
|---|---|---|
| Display | 50% | 50% |
| TV | 70% | 30% |
| Radio | 70% | 30% |
| Sites | 65% | 35% |
| Apps | 65% | 35% |
| Direct | 80% | 20% |
| Local | 70% | 30% |
| Marketplace | 60% | 40% |
| Blueprint | 70% | 30% |
Second-price auction. Floor CPM. One cent above the second bid.
Every ad request triggers a real-time auction. The engine collects eligible candidates, runs a second-price auction, and returns a decision with tracking URLs.
Slot Request
A surface sends a slot request with its surface type, surface ID, slot type, dimensions (or max duration for video/audio), context fields, and optional floor CPM override.
Targeting Filter
The engine loads all active campaigns and their ad groups, then filters each group against the slot context. Six dimensions checked: surface type, geo, vertical, category, daypart, audience.
Creative Match
For each eligible campaign-group pair, the engine fetches approved creatives and filters by dimension match (width x height) and duration cap. Blocked categories on the surface are excluded.
Second-Price Auction
Candidates above the floor CPM are sorted by effective bid (campaign base bid x group multiplier). Winner pays one cent above the second-highest bid, or floor plus one cent if only one candidate.
Decision + Tracking
The auction returns the winning creative with impression and click tracking URLs. Revenue is split between seller and Calisto per the surface-type share table.
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bid types (CPM, CPC, flat rate)
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campaign objectives (awareness, traffic, conversions)
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campaign lifecycle statuses
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payout methods (card, bank transfer, wallet)
9 surface types. Screens, streams, sites, storefronts, and listings.
Every ad-serving Calisto product registers its slots as a surface type. Buyers can target specific surfaces or run campaigns across all of them. Each surface type has its own revenue share split, creative format requirements, and slot dimensions.
Physical digital signage screens. Sidebar (300x250) and fullscreen (1920x1080) slots with configurable rotation interval.
Pre-roll and mid-roll video ads on in-room and streaming channels. VAST-compatible, skippable after a configurable delay.
Audio pre-roll ads on broadcast and streaming radio. DAAST-compatible with optional companion banner.
IAB-standard banner ads on subscriber websites. Seven sizes: leaderboard, rectangle, skyscraper, billboard, large rectangle, half-page, mobile banner.
The same IAB banner suite rendered inside subscriber PWAs. Shares targeting and creative pipeline with Sites.
Sponsored cards inside creator storefronts and concierge channels. Native listing format with headline, description, and thumbnail.
Sponsored listings in the services discovery directory. Card format matches organic results with a sponsored badge.
Sponsored product and service cards on calistoco.com. Blended into marketplace browse and search results.
Sponsored template cards in the Blueprint template marketplace. Promoted templates appear alongside organic listings.
Pulse drops below 60%. Budgets double.
Calisto Pulse sends occupancy signals to the budget automation engine. Below 60% occupancy, campaign budgets boost by 2x. Above 90%, budgets reduce by 0.5x.
Impressions, clicks, conversions. Both sides of the ledger.
Buyers track campaign performance through six core metrics. Sellers monitor surface earnings with fill rate and eCPM. Four report views cover performance, audience, per-campaign detail, and unified ROI.
Buyer Metrics
Seller Metrics
Approval pipelines. Budget caps. Seller verification.
Calisto Ads enforces creative review, campaign status workflows, seller verification, and budget safeguards. Buyers cannot serve unapproved creatives. Sellers cannot receive live traffic until verified.
Global settings for the Calisto Ads account. Notification preferences, default currency, and timezone configuration.
Every creative goes through a review pipeline. Statuses: pending, approved, rejected. Rejected creatives include a reason and can be resubmitted after revision.
Six campaign lifecycle states: draft, pending review, active, paused, completed, rejected. Status transitions are enforced by the API.
Sellers go through verification before surfaces can receive live traffic. Statuses: active, paused, pending verification, suspended.
Buyers fund campaigns and sellers receive payouts via credit card, bank transfer, or Calisto Wallet. Configured per account.
Campaign spend is capped by daily budget and total budget limits. The auction engine stops serving a campaign when either cap is reached. Bid validation enforces minimum and maximum amounts.
Display, TV, Radio, Sites, Pulse, Local, Marketplace, and Blueprint.
Calisto Ads does not operate in isolation. Ad-serving components are embedded in 9 Calisto products. Each product imports from the ad-integrations package and calls the shared serve endpoint.
Sidebar and fullscreen ad slots on digital signage screens. The display app imports ad-integration components and calls the shared serve endpoint to fill idle screen rotations with paid creatives.
VAST-compatible video player renders pre-roll and mid-roll ads on in-room and streaming channels. Skippable after a configurable delay.
DAAST-compatible audio player inserts pre-roll ads before streaming audio content. Optional companion banner displays alongside the audio player during playback.
IAB-standard banner ads in seven sizes render on subscriber websites and PWAs. The ad-integration package provides a single WebBannerAd component that both apps share.
Occupancy signals from Pulse feed budget automation. When occupancy drops below 60%, campaign budgets boost by 2x. When occupancy rises above 90%, budgets reduce by 0.5x.
Sponsored listing cards in the services directory, calistoco.com marketplace, and Blueprint template store. All three use the same SponsoredListingCard component with surface-type routing.
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Calisto products serving ad inventory
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API endpoints in the Ads application
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auction pipeline stages per ad request
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conversion types tracked (booking, purchase, signup, visit)
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