What a laptop lid, a jacket or a car can earn as ad space

How a price forms

• The floor. The owner sets the lowest monthly rate they will accept. Nothing below it can be bid.
• The bid. A brand bids a monthly rate for a run of 1, 3, 6 or 12 months. A 10 per cent deposit holds the bid; it comes back if the bid loses, and counts toward the payment if it wins.
• The run. Longer runs usually come with lower monthly rates, as in any rental. A brand testing a surface bids one month; a brand that knows it works bids twelve.
• The approval. The owner sees the top bid and the artwork together and approves or declines. A declined brand gets its deposit back.

What brands pay for

Brands are not buying the square centimetres; they are buying where those centimetres go. A listing says where the thing goes, how often, and who sees it. A laptop that opens at three conferences a year is worth more to a developer tool than a laptop that stays home. A car in city traffic every day is worth more than one in a garage. A jacket on the metro at rush hour is a different product from a jacket worn on weekends. The honest, specific context in a listing is the thing that raises bids.

Size matters less than people expect, and print quality matters more. A clean 30 by 20 centimetre panel at eye level beats a blurry car door. peelbid checks the artwork against the panel size before a bid is accepted, so nothing is printed soft.

What raises a bid

• Where it goes. A listing that names the places, a campus, a coworking space, a conference season, a commuter line, gives a brand something to buy.
• How often. Daily use beats weekend use. Say which, and be accurate; the monthly photos will show it anyway.
• The photos. Sharp, well lit, the whole object, the panel marked at real size. A brand bids on what it can see.
• Verification. A verified listing has been checked by a person. It is also what makes an owner a Founding Lister.
• A clean record. Proofs on time, spot checks answered. A campaign's public page shows this, and the next brand looks.
• Timing. List before the season the surface is seen in: a conference laptop before spring and autumn, a beach bag before June.

The rules, with a worked example

peelbid is on testnet as this is written, so there is no market data yet. The rules, though, are fixed in the contract and worth knowing before you list. The lowest floor an owner can set is 50 USDC a month. Each new bid must beat the leader by at least 5 per cent. Every bid locks a deposit of 10 per cent, never less than 10 USDC, which an outbid brand gets back or can roll into its next bid. While the contracts are unaudited, a campaign is capped at 500 USDC. So an illustration, not a forecast: a laptop panel listed at 50 a month, bid up to 60, 75 and 90 by three brands, and won for three months at 90, puts 270 USDC in escrow and releases 90 a month, of which 82.80 reaches the owner after the 8 per cent fee.

For comparison, the centralized car-wrap networks publish what they pay: Carvertise says most of its drivers earn between 450 and 1,500 dollars a month on campaigns of three to twelve months, for a full vehicle wrap on a car that drives a lot (Carvertise). A single panel on a laptop will not earn that; a car with several panels in a busy city could be bid toward it. The difference is who sets the number: on a wrap network the operator does, on peelbid the brands do.

The owner's costs

• Printing. The owner prints the artwork as supplied, at the listed size, on outdoor vinyl with a laminate, at a local print shop. A laptop-sized sticker costs a few dollars; a car door more.
• Placing it well. Clean surface, no bubbles, the whole panel. The first photo is what the brand sees before the first payment moves.
• The monthly photo. A minute a month, with the code peelbid issues on the spot.
• Gas. Transactions on Arc are paid in USDC and cost a fraction of a cent. peelbid tops up a new owner's wallet with enough for the first proofs, so there is no second token to buy.

Earnings are not guaranteed. A listing may get no bids, and a campaign ends when a brand stops bidding. What peelbid guarantees is narrower and more useful: once a month is proven, nobody can withhold the payment for it. Owners who want to start can claim an early access pass; the first hundred owners whose listing passes verification become Founding Listers and pay 4 per cent instead of 8, for as long as they list.

Setting a floor

A floor is the lowest you would accept, not the price you hope for. For a first listing, set it near the minimum and let the auction find the number; a floor far above what brands will pay means silence, and silence tells you nothing. After one campaign you know what a brand paid and whether others bid, and you can raise the floor for the next run with evidence. Bids are ranked by monthly rate, so a twelve-month bid at 60 ranks below a one-month bid at 70; the owner chooses which run lengths to accept when listing, and can refuse the short ones.