Posting the Ad
Accepting a booking is a promise; posting is keeping it. This page covers getting the ad live: the window you must hit, the two ways the post gets published, and the obligations that run for as long as the placement does.
Once the post is live, the next step is proving it — see Submitting proof of delivery.
The posting window
Every accepted booking has a scheduled window — the date range the advertiser booked, shown on the booking card in the In progress tab. The ad must go live inside that window.
- Too early is refused. Marking a booking delivered before the window opens returns "The posting window hasn't opened yet — it starts ..." with the exact opening time in UTC.
- Too late is refused, and the booking is refunded. After the window closes you get "The posting window has closed — this booking is being refunded to the advertiser."
- A grace of about 2 hours is allowed at each edge, for clock differences. It exists for clock skew, not for scheduling strategy.
The card spells the deadline out for manual deliveries: "Post by [date and time] — after the window closes the booking auto-refunds to the advertiser."
Tell the advertiser early rather than letting the window lapse. A window that quietly expires refunds the advertiser in full, costs you 1.00 reliability, and on deposit-backed bookings forfeits your good-faith deposit to the advertiser. There is no penalty for honest, early communication.
Route 1 — Auto-post: the bot publishes for you
If auto-post is on for the booking, delivery is fully automatic. The card reads "Accepted — scheduled", with the explanation: "Auto-post is ON — the bot publishes on time, pins for the promised hours, and unpins after. Funds release per your payout rung."
What the bot does:
- Publishes the ad in your channel at the window open, exactly as booked — the same text, the same media, the same links.
- Pins the post for formats that promise time at the top, and unpins it when the pin window ends.
- Records the delivery for you: no link to paste, no button to press. The proof, monitoring and payout machinery described in Submitting proof of delivery starts automatically at publish.
Where auto-post comes from:
- Your listing's Auto-post & pin switch (in the listing wizard's Rules step) sets the default for that channel. New listings have it on.
- It is confirmed per booking when you accept from the dashboard, so you can take one booking manually and leave the rest automatic.
- Accepting from a Telegram message always uses the listing's saved default — the bot never takes an instruction from the message itself about whether to publish into your channel.
For auto-post to work, @OnflowAdsBot must still be an admin of your channel with the Post Messages right. If the bot has been removed or its rights stripped, publishing fails.
It removes the single most expensive mistake in the marketplace — missing a window — and it costs you nothing. Turn it off only when a placement genuinely needs your hands on it.
Route 2 — Posting it yourself
With auto-post off, the accepted booking's card reads: "Accepted — post it yourself, then paste the live message link to mark it delivered."
- Publish the ad in your channel, inside the window, exactly as the advertiser booked it — same text, same media, same links. The creative is frozen into a signed proof record at delivery, so differences are detectable later.
- Pin it yourself for the promised hours if the format includes them. A "2h top" format means the ad is the pinned message of the channel for its first two hours.
- Submit the proof link and press Mark posted — the full walkthrough is in Submitting proof of delivery.
Nothing counts as delivered until step 3. A post that is live but never marked delivered still refunds at the window close.
While the ad runs
From the moment the post goes live until its promised duration has fully run, three things must stay true:
The post must stay live, unedited, and (where the format promises it) pinned for its full promised duration. Onflow Ads's monitor checks repeatedly. Taking the ad down early, or unpinning it during its promised hours at the top, is detected automatically, pauses your payout, and costs 1.50 reliability points.
- Do not delete it. The promised in-feed duration is what the buyer paid for: 24 hours for a 1h/24h slot, 7 days for a native placement, 30 days for a monthly one.
- Do not unpin it during its top-hours. Only a definite unpin of the ad itself counts — pinning another message above it does not flag you.
- Do not edit it. The delivered post is compared against the creative frozen at delivery, and Telegram's own edit signal is recorded. If a change is genuinely needed, agree it with the advertiser first.
- Keep @OnflowAdsBot as an admin. If the bot loses access, your channel becomes unreadable to the monitor, and an unreadable channel reads as a broken placement.
Once the promised duration has fully run, monitoring stops and you are free to remove the post.
If the window lapses
A booking that was accepted but never posted closes automatically at its window's end. Three things then happen, in this order:
- The advertiser is refunded in full. Always — regardless of the cause.
- The cause is assessed. A booking that closed unposted counts against you only when the cause was yours.
- The consequences follow from that assessment.
| Cause | Reliability | Good-faith deposit |
|---|---|---|
| You simply did not post, or the bot could not publish because it was removed from the channel or lost its rights | −1.00 | Forfeited to the advertiser |
| A platform or Telegram failure — our scheduler did not run, Telegram was unreachable or rate-limiting | No change | Returned to you |
| The cause could not be determined | No change, pending human review | Returned to you |
That distinction is deliberate: you are never penalised for a failure that was not yours, and an ambiguous failure is looked at by a person rather than being silently charged to your score.
Statuses at a glance
| What you see | What it means |
|---|---|
| "Accepted — scheduled" with auto-post ON | Nothing to do; the bot publishes and pins at the window open |
| "Accepted — post it yourself ... Post by [date]" | Manual delivery; the window and Mark posted are on the card |
| "The posting window hasn't opened yet — it starts ..." | You are early; the exact opening time in UTC is named |
| "The posting window has closed — this booking is being refunded to the advertiser." | The window lapsed; see the table above |
| "Delivered — funds release on ..." | Proof accepted; the clocks in Escrow and getting paid have started |
FAQ
Can I post a few minutes before the window opens so it is ready?
The grace covers clock differences, not scheduling strategy. Post inside the window; if you want the exact window-open moment handled for you, turn on auto-post.
My channel had an outage, or Telegram was down, and I missed the window.
Once the window has fully closed, the refund is automatic and cannot be undone from your side. Where the failure was on the platform's side, no reliability penalty is applied and your deposit comes back. Message the advertiser — a rebooking is often the practical fix — and contact support from the booking if anything looks wrong.
Can I post the ad in a different channel of mine?
No. The booking names one channel, and the monitor visits that channel's post. Posting elsewhere is not delivery.
Can I add my own comment above the ad, or change a link?
Publish the creative as booked. Anything you add or change reads as content drift on the proof trail and can count against you in a dispute. If the advertiser agrees to a change, get that agreement first.
Does auto-post work if I am on the Free plan?
Auto-post and pin is a listing rule, set in the wizard's Rules step, and it applies to the bookings you accept with it on. What varies by plan is how quickly the resulting payout is released — see Escrow and getting paid.
When exactly can I delete the ad?
Once the promised duration has fully run. For a 1h top · 24h feed placement that is 24 hours after it went live; for a native placement, seven days. Deleting earlier is the single most expensive mistake in the system: −1.50 reliability and a paused payout.
Next: Submitting proof of delivery — the link that converts a live post into a paid booking.