New module in eRepublik - Citizen Ads

Day 601, 05:58 • Published in • by Plato

Dear citizens,


There's an old saying, “advertising, the heart and soul of commerce.” True words these are! And it is not us who discovered the tremendous power and importance of advertising, but our forefathers. In the ancient Sumerian Kingdom, red painted stones guided customers toward what could be called "stores," or "taverns." Buried in the deserts of pharaohs, we can still find advertising messages on papyrus or ceramics tablets, written down by some smart merchants long before the foundation of Rome. Speaking of Rome, messages written on the walls, like “Death to Nero,” were also a form of advertising. We can say that advertising accompanied the very birth of human civilization. Of course, 4000 years ago advertising was not the way it is today. Actually, people were not aware of what they are doing, conceptually speaking, but they were happy to see their products sold. Or ideas propagated. In this day and age, we call this advertising.

In our efforts to develop a New World which resembles reality as much as possible, the feature to advertise products or ideas, was a necessity. That is why our team created a new module for the citizens that understand, appreciate, or fear the immense power of advertising.

Now that we have talked about the “why,” let's discuss the “where” and “how”. The citizen ads are displayed on the far right portion of eRepublik pages, where in the past you've always seen skyscraper banners. The advertising box displays three ads, each one having a picture and a text body (150 characters). Also, by rolling the mouse over an ad and clicking it, you will follow the link (eRepublik internal) which the citizen specified when they created their ad. It might be a link to their profile, or possibly their company, or an article about them, or really anything they desire.

You might say “well, just three ads, for such a big world,” but you don't need to worry. We have carefully calculated it such that the new citizen ads will be productive and useful, not annoying. We know that each citizen also wishes to get the most benefits for the Gold he or she pays, that's why a powerful targeting tool is available. After you select an image, your body-text and your link, it will be advisable to target your ad carefully.

Location: Global, just one country, just one region of a country.
Citizens: Everyone, Voters, Congressmen, General Managers, Employees, Party Members, Super Soldiers, Party Presidents.

So, it would not be advisable to leave the default values (global + everyone) and advertise your message to all 140.000 citizens of the New World, if instead you would just like some votes, from voters, residing in your region. You will understand why shortly.

The concepts at the heart of the technical side of citizen ads are Impressions and Cost per Impression (CPI). After you have targeted your ad, you will need to make an “offer,” in order to specify how much Gold you are willing to spend, in addition to the number of impressions you expect for your money. Impressions are a measure of how many pages containing your ad have been viewed by citizens .

If you divide the offered Gold by the impressions, you get a rate - the CPI. If your CPI is too low, there is a high possibility that your ad will not make any impression - so here you'll be testing your marketing skills.

Let's say you have offered 10 Gold and asked for 5000 impressions - this means that your ad CPI would be 0.002. If another citizen offers 10 Gold, but asks for 3000 impressions, his CPI would be 0.003. Every impression, that is a page viewed containing your ad, “eats” from your allocated Gold an amount equal to the CPI . When a vacant space in the ads box appears, the first one to get that space will be the ad belonging to the citizen with the 0.003 CPI (in our hypothetical situation). At this moment, you have two options: either you wait, or you edit your ad so that you have the higher CPI. You can do this by lowering the impressions or by adding Gold. The system updates real-time, so if after editing the ad your CPI is in top three, your ad will appear immediately. Statistics are available for you, showing how many clicks your ad received, impressions consumed/total, and also consumed Gold out of the total allocated budget.

Now, it's clear why targeting your ad is an important step, which you should consider carefully. The larger your target audience, the faster your impressions are “eaten.” You want your ad to have as many impressions as possible, with the highest CPI, so choose wisely both where and to whom you advertise, in order to have success with your campaign.


The ads box contains three ads, but we can have hundreds of simultaneously well-targeted ads, all over the world, at any given moment.


So start testing your marketing skills but do not forget to read the Citizen Advertisement Laws to make sure that your ads respect the dignity and rights of other entities in eRepublik.


Good luck,

The eRepublik Team