How it works
How slots are allocated, what an automated check looks for, when a person gets involved, and what the numbers in your dashboard actually count.
Pick the number of placements you want each month and pay by card. Monthly or annual — annual is two months cheaper. Your account is created the moment the payment clears.
Two minutes
A guided form: what you do, where you are, photos, your link, and the offer you want to run. Ten minutes on a phone. On Featured and Spotlight we draft the promotional copy from what you give us and send it to you to approve.
Ten minutes, once
Submissions are checked against our editorial standards automatically. Most clear straight away. Anything unusual — a regulated claim, a broken link — goes to a person, and we tell you within 24 hours either way.
Usually under an hour
The scheduler allocates your placements across the coming editions using a published rotation rule. Your listing goes live in the directory immediately. Your report arrives at the start of each month.
Every month, automatically
The formats
The lead slot at the top of the edition, with a written introduction from us rather than copy lifted from your website. One per edition, which is why it is on the Spotlight plan only.
Wren & Rye · Restaurants · The Causeway
Two courses and a glass of something for £22, Tuesday through Thursday. The menu changes with whatever the kitchen got that morning, which is either the appeal or the problem depending on how you feel about surprises.
Two courses and a glass, Tuesday to Thursday
The rotation rule
Published in full, because a rotation nobody can inspect is indistinguishable from favouritism.
Nothing here is random. Running the scheduler twice on the same data produces the same edition.
Each edition has 1 Spotlight, 6 featured cards and 12 roundup mentions. The scheduler will not exceed these numbers, which is why a city can genuinely sell out rather than quietly getting more crowded.
Spotlight first, then featured, then roundup — the scarcest position is allocated while the most candidates are still available.
An active subscription that isn’t paused, a promotion that has been approved, and placements still remaining in the current billing cycle. Nothing else gets considered.
Within a slot type, candidates are sorted by how many of their contracted placements are still owed, then by how long since they last appeared, then by when the promotion was created. Someone on five placements a month who has had none will always outrank someone on three who has had two.
No business takes two positions in the same edition, and there are at least 3 days between a business’s appearances.
If a city is oversubscribed and we can’t run everything we owe you in a billing month, the difference is credited automatically and appears in your monthly report. We’d rather refund than pack the edition and devalue every placement in it.
Review
Most submissions clear automatically. The exceptions are narrow and specific rather than 'at our discretion'.
We come back within 24 hours either way — 8 on Spotlight. If we turn something down we tell you exactly what needs to change, and refund the month if you’d rather not change it. The full standards.
Measurement
Everything in your dashboard is counted by us on our own platform. None of it is modelled, estimated or attributed.
If it makes sense for your business, setting it up takes about ten minutes. If it doesn’t, we’d rather you didn’t subscribe — email hello@parade.example and tell us why.