Skill contests: a prize pool won on verified views

Q: For brands: how do you design the prize ladder?

- Top-heavy, not winner-takes-all. A single big prize makes everyone below rank 3 stop posting halfway through. Meaningful middle positions keep the whole field active. - More positions, more participants. Ten prizes of €100–€1,000 attract more total reach than one prize of €3,000. - Two to four weeks is the sweet spot for most formats — long enough for views to accumulate, short enough to hold attention. - Write the rules into the brief: allowed formats, forbidden angles, mandatory disclosure. Brief rules become the approval criteria, and approvals feed the leaderboard.

Q: For creators: how do you win a contest?

- Only your best clip counts — so submit several and let the leaderboard tell you which concept works, then iterate on the winner. - Post early. An early clip gets its full tracking window before closing, and the tie-break favours the earlier submission. - A clip still pending when the contest closes cannot be ranked — submit with enough time for review, especially in pre-approval campaigns. - Disclosure is mandatory here too — contest content is still commercial content. See the EU disclosure guide.

Q: What are the most common mistakes?

Brands: winner-takes-all ladders (the field goes quiet), durations under a week (views need time), vague briefs (contested rejections at the worst moment — settlement). Creators: submitting at the last minute (pending at closing = rejected), buying views (the growth curve gives you away, and the penalty is a ban plus forfeiture), skipping the disclosure (a legitimate rejection reason). The contest rewards the best clip — make sure yours is still standing when the music stops. Next: clipping guide · EU disclosure · browse the open contests among all campaigns

A contest turns a campaign into a competition: the brand locks a prize pool in escrow, creators submit clips, and a public leaderboard ranks them live by verified views. At closing, the top positions take the prizes and every unassigned cent goes straight back to the brand. No entry fee, no draw, no luck — and that last part is not a slogan, it is the legal design that keeps contests on the right side of EU gambling law.

What is a skill contest?

A skill contest is a campaign type where the budget is not paid per 1,000 views or per asset but as descending prizes for the best-performing clips. The brand defines the prize ladder (position 1 the largest — the platform enforces the descending order), funds it in escrow and sets a duration between 3 and 120 days. Creators enter for free, the ranking criterion is objective — views verified through official platform APIs, exactly as in the clipping guide — and settlement happens exactly once, when the contest closes.

How it works step by step

The brand creates the contest: a prize ladder (up to 50 positions, strictly descending), a duration in days and a brief with the rules of the game. The sum of the prizes can never exceed the budget — the platform refuses the campaign otherwise.
Funding fixes the calendar. The moment the escrow payment clears, the closing date is set. Everyone competes against the same clock, visible on the campaign page.
Creators join for free and submit clips posted from their OAuth-connected accounts. No entry fee, no purchase, no "pay to boost your entry" — ever.
Approved clips enter the live leaderboard, ranked by verified views: numbers from the official API, fraud scoring on the whole measurement series, zero screenshots.
The contest closes. Tracking windows finish and the numbers freeze. Submissions still pending at that moment are rejected automatically with a stated reason and remain appealable — nobody drops out of a contest silently.
Settlement: each creator's single best clip takes their position in the final ranking, prizes are assigned top-down, and the winnings go through the normal payout flow — Stripe Connect with KYC, a ledger entry for every cent, the usual hold.
The remainder returns to the brand: prizes without a winner (fewer ranked creators than positions) plus whatever the pool never allocated are refunded and recorded in the ledger.

Why is a skill contest not gambling?

Gambling regulation across the EU generally requires three elements together: a stake (you pay to play), chance (the outcome is random) and a prize. A skill contest on AdLicens removes the first two by design. Participation is free — no entry fee, no required purchase. And the outcome is determined by performance, not by chance: the ranking is the verified view count of a clip you scripted, edited and published, measured identically for everyone through the platform's official API. There is no draw, no raffle, no "random winner among participants" — that would be a promotional lottery, a different and separately regulated mechanism that AdLicens deliberately does not offer. Skill decides; luck has no seat at the table.

Where are contests allowed?

Prize competitions are not harmonised at EU level — each member state draws its own line between skill and chance. Romania separates advertising lotteries (random winner, OG 99/2000) and games of chance (stake plus chance, OUG 77/2009) from genuine skill competitions, which fall outside both regimes. Germany distinguishes free Geschicklichkeitsspiele with clear participation terms from licensed Glücksspiel. France allows skill-based competitions under consumer law conditions. Because the line is national, on AdLicens jurisdiction is data, not code: a contest can only be created in jurisdictions where contests are enabled (contests_allowed) — Romania, Germany and France at launch — and the generic EU fallback blocks them by default. Trying to create one elsewhere fails at the first step, not in court.

How does the leaderboard stay honest?

Four rules keep the competition fair, and none of them is negotiable:

One prized position per creator — your best submission counts, so one account cannot occupy the whole podium with five clips.
Ties break by submission time: equal verified views, the earlier clip wins.
Only verified views count — OAuth-connected account, official API numbers, fraud scoring across the whole window. Bought views end in a permanent ban, not a prize.
Every automatic rejection carries a reason and can be appealed, including the clips left pending at closing time.

What happens to the unused budget?

It goes back to the brand, with a paper trail. Example: a €3,000 pool with prizes of €1,000 / €600 / €400 / €300 / €200 (€2,500 assigned across 5 positions). If only three creators end up ranked, positions 4 and 5 stay unclaimed: €2,000 is paid out, and €1,000 — the unclaimed €500 plus the €500 the ladder never allocated — is refunded as a ledger entry the brand can audit. Escrow means the money was always there; settlement means it only leaves for verified winners.

For brands: how do you design the prize ladder?

Top-heavy, not winner-takes-all. A single big prize makes everyone below rank 3 stop posting halfway through. Meaningful middle positions keep the whole field active.
More positions, more participants. Ten prizes of €100–€1,000 attract more total reach than one prize of €3,000.
Two to four weeks is the sweet spot for most formats — long enough for views to accumulate, short enough to hold attention.
Write the rules into the brief: allowed formats, forbidden angles, mandatory disclosure. Brief rules become the approval criteria, and approvals feed the leaderboard.

For creators: how do you win a contest?

Only your best clip counts — so submit several and let the leaderboard tell you which concept works, then iterate on the winner.
Post early. An early clip gets its full tracking window before closing, and the tie-break favours the earlier submission.
A clip still pending when the contest closes cannot be ranked — submit with enough time for review, especially in pre-approval campaigns.
Disclosure is mandatory here too — contest content is still commercial content. See the EU disclosure guide.

What are the most common mistakes?

Brands: winner-takes-all ladders (the field goes quiet), durations under a week (views need time), vague briefs (contested rejections at the worst moment — settlement). Creators: submitting at the last minute (pending at closing = rejected), buying views (the growth curve gives you away, and the penalty is a ban plus forfeiture), skipping the disclosure (a legitimate rejection reason). The contest rewards the best clip — make sure yours is still standing when the music stops.

Next: clipping guide · EU disclosure · browse the open contests among all campaigns