Frequently asked questions

A ranked discovery platform where people can browse public lists, make their own versions, and use a king-of-the-hill style ad marketplace driven by supply and demand.

For advertisers, that means paying for placement and ranking power based on market demand. For list creators and viewers, it means ranked and tiered public curation built around comparison, sharing, and community consensus where enabled.

Lists are user-curated ranked lists or tier boards. A ranked list places items in order, while a tier board groups items into labeled tiers such as S/A/B/C, Gold/Silver/Bronze, or any structure the creator defines.

When participation is enabled, you can make your own version of a public list. That personal version is separate from the creator’s original list and can be compared against it.

Community consensus is an aggregate view based on submitted versions when the creator has enabled it and made it visible. Depending on the creator’s settings and the current state of submissions, consensus may be unavailable, waiting for submissions, pending an update, hidden until a reveal point, or visible as an aggregate community view. If you do not see consensus, it does not always mean participation is disabled.

User-curated lists are not official Podium Atlas endorsements unless they are clearly labeled otherwise.

To report a list or issue, use the contact page.

You are paying for advertising placement and ranking power within the platform.

Rank is determined by the platform’s ranking algorithm. The algorithm estimates relevance, but it is predominantly driven by the amount of funding allocated to an ad relative to others in that category.

There is also an internal recency and decay mechanism that acts uniformly and proportionally on all ads in the system from the moment they go live.

Example: $1 of ranking power could equate to $0.90 after one week, then $0.81 after week two, and so on.

No.

Every time funding is added to an existing ad it is treated as new funding and has the same influence per dollar spent as any new listing.

Your total effective funding is increased by the full amount that you add.

No.

Because this is a free-market ad environment, another business is able to overtake any spot on the website at any time by raising funding for its ad.

Payment does not guarantee a permanent position.

Once you are logged in, there is an estimate provided for the amount necessary to take a position within a category or how much supplemental funding an existing ad needs to overtake a category.

The overtake amount is an estimate of the additional funding currently needed to move ahead of the selected ad based on live rankings.

Because rankings can change as other ads gain funding or engagement, the amount shown may change before payment is completed.

Yes.

To maintain fairness for advertisers and to allow more targeted marketing, ads and rankings within a category are only against other ads in that specific category.

There is also a top list for parent categories, when available, that ranks ads from their subcategories.

Yes.

Ads are subject to review and must comply with platform rules and policies before they can appear publicly.

Yes.

We will first attempt to reach out if we believe there was a mistake or that an issue can be remedied.

If we do not have mutually satisfactory alignment for approval, we will issue a full refund if the ad was never live.

Your submission is processed, your ad enters the platform workflow for approval, and ranking and placement update as the system recalculates.

Approval can take up to 24 hours before your ad is live. No funding power decay occurs until your ad is actually live.

Yes.

Rankings are dynamic and may change as other ads receive funding, engagement changes, or the ranking system updates.

Except where required by law, payments are generally non-refundable after your ad is live.

Please review our Terms for full details.

Yes.

Ads may be rejected, limited, paused, or removed if they violate platform rules, legal requirements, or review standards.

Certain changes may require re-review or resubmission depending on what is changed.

Take the original placement offline if needed, then create a new placement for the correct slot.

Funding stays with the original ad, so if you incorrectly scheduled a funded ad please reach out to the customer support team via our contact form.

Because this is a free-market platform, that depends on marketplace conditions.

Rank and placement are driven by supply and demand within the platform and by ongoing ranking conditions. Active placement is not guaranteed indefinitely.

If you need help, contact us through the contact page.

No. We do not sell your data.

Please reach out to us through the contact form with details and we can help you evaluate it before submission.

As the platform grows, categories are expanded based on user needs, engagement, and marketplace behavior.

If you would like to suggest a new category or category change, please use the contact form. We can place it into the category review pipeline or let you know the current company stance on that category.