Anti-Snipe Protection Added to Ad Auctions

Have you ever been participating in one of our Outbid auctions, and after waiting and leading the auction for days, weeks, or months for the auction to close, you are bid sniped in the last 5 seconds? Not anymore. Our “Outbid” system that allows you to outbid an existing advertiser on any Direct Buy in our platform, was modeled partially after eBay’s hard end-time for all auctions. But real life auctions don’t work this way.

An auctioneer would never close an auction when there were still interested buyers actively bidding. Multiple warning are provided before closing — “Going once, going twice, going three times, SOLD!” New bidders at the last moment revive the bidding process (alas, even at the dismay of the previous high bidder). This was the inspiration for our updates to Outbid, that, and the complaints we have received over time of all the bid snipe activity.

Our solution was to use the fixed-time for the hard closure of the auction, but if a bid is received in the last hour, the auction will be extended and not close until at least 60 minutes have passed since the last bid.  That means you will always have a chance to bid, even if someone tries to snipe you at the last second.