Advertise on The Pillar

The Pillar is a free 3D city that runs in the browser. Visitors walk, drive and fly through it, and in the middle stands an 80-floor tower. Every one of its 1,920 windows, and every one of the 187 billboards on the buildings around it, is ad space you can rent by the month. This guide covers what you get, what it costs, who it suits and how to set it up. It also says plainly what The Pillar can't do for you yet.

What you are buying

You are renting a spot in the game's world. On the tower, your logo sits on a pane of glass. On a billboard, your logo or a full banner covers a sign on top of a building out in the city. Both stay up day and night for every visitor who passes them, for as long as you pay.

Anyone who taps your window opens its panel. The panel shows your brand name, a one-line pitch of up to 140 characters, a short pricing line of up to 80 characters (for example "Free plan, Pro from $19 a month") and a link to your site. It also shows a view counter, which goes up by one each time someone opens your window. It starts at zero and counts real opens only, never a made-up number.

Every lit spot gets its own page too, at thepillar.io/w/ plus the spot's id, for example thepillar.io/w/F12-S3. That page carries a link preview card with your logo, your name, your pitch and your floor, so the link looks right when you post it on X, iMessage or Slack. Anyone who opens the link is flown straight to your spot on the tower. Your brand also appears in the directory, the page that lists every company on The Pillar, with a link to your site.

It helps to know what you are not buying. The Pillar is a 3D open-world browser game and an advertising marketplace. A window is a licensed ad pane on its 80-floor tower, not real property and not a security. You get a licence to show your name, logo and link on that pane for the period you pay for. When the licence ends, the pane goes back to the pool. You can read the full wording on the Advertising License page.

Who it suits

A window is a small, flat-price placement, so it fits anyone with a link worth visiting and a logo worth seeing. These are the uses we built it around.

Shopify stores

Put your store's logo on a window and use the pricing line for an offer, such as "Free shipping over $50" or "New drop every Friday". Point the link at a collection page rather than your homepage, so a visitor lands on products. If your products photograph well, a billboard is the better pick: a full banner can show the product itself instead of a logo.

Shopify apps and Chrome extensions

App makers get the most out of the pricing line, because it sits right under the pitch. "Free plan, Pro from $9 a month" tells a visitor what they are getting before they click. You sign in with X, where a lot of independent developers already post, and your share link gives a launch post a preview card with your logo on it.

SaaS and web tools

If your tool has a free tier, use the pitch to say what it does in one line and the pricing line to say it's free to start. Link to the sign-up page, not a marketing page three clicks away from it. A window high on the tower suits a product that wants to look established; a billboard suits one that wants to test the waters for a few dollars.

Product launches and drops

Every launch needs a place to point people. Rent a billboard or a window a week or two out and link it to your waitlist or launch page. There is no self-serve editing after checkout yet, so write a pitch that still reads right after launch day ("The spring collection is here" ages better than a date) and send the link to a page you control, which you can update whenever you like.

Newsletters, podcasts and YouTube channels

Billboards cost $4 to $8 a month. For a creator that is cheaper than most ways of getting a logo in front of new eyes. Link to your subscribe page and use the pitch to say what a reader or listener gets each week.

Games and indie studios

The Pillar is itself a game, so the visitors are already in a playing mood. A studio can put its game's logo on a window, link to its store page and use the pricing line for "Free to play" or a launch discount.

Agencies, freelancers and local businesses

Design and development studios can rent a window as a calling card, since the tower is a fair example of what the web can do. Local businesses can link to a booking page. Companies that are hiring can say so in the pitch ("We're hiring Shopify developers") and link to the jobs page.

Why put your brand inside a game

The price stays flat

Search and social ads charge per click or per thousand views, and the price moves with whoever else is bidding that day. Windows have one monthly price. It doesn't change with how many players pass it, with the weather or with the time of day. Whatever price the pane shows is what Stripe charges, to the cent.

The ads are the scenery

On most websites an ad sits in a box next to the article you came to read, and visitors learn to skip the box. On The Pillar the ads are part of the world: the glass on the tower and the signs on the buildings. Players drive past them, fly a helicopter around them and ride the elevator up the face of the tower, past every window on it.

Nothing follows anyone around

The Pillar doesn't run ad-network trackers. Your ad is an image in a 3D scene. Everyone sees the same thing, and it doesn't follow anyone to other websites. If your customers care about privacy, this is an easy ad to stand behind.

It's on all month

There is no daily budget that runs out by mid-afternoon. Your window is lit for every visitor at every hour, for the whole month you paid for.

You can share it

Most ads only exist while someone happens to be looking. A window also gives you a link with a preview card, so you can post it, put it in a newsletter or pin it to your profile. Clicks on it land at the exact spot on the tower.

It's early

Most of the tower is still dark. Today the lit windows belong mostly to the products made by the team behind The Pillar. If you light a window now, you get first pick of floors and faces.

Your ad can't be blown up

The game has rockets, mines, bombs and a flamethrower. They wreck cars and burn trees. They never touch the windows or the billboards: scorch marks land on streets and roofs, and the code skips the billboards on purpose.

What it costs

Windows are priced by floor. The bottom floor costs $9 a month, and each floor up costs about 4.5% more than the one below it, so floor 47 is $68 and floor 80 is $291. The two corner panes on each side of a floor cost 35% more, which makes the top corner the most expensive pane on the tower at $392.85 a month.

Billboards are the cheap seats. Each one costs between $4 and $8 a month, depending on how visible the building it sits on is. Even the most visible billboard costs less than the cheapest window.

Weather and time of day change the look of the city, never the price. You pay the price shown on the pane every month until you cancel.

Window or billboard

Pick a window if your logo is your strongest asset. Windows sit on the tower, which every visitor sees from the moment the page loads, and height counts for something here. The buildings around the tower are mostly low, so windows from about floor 20 up rise above the rooftops and can be seen from further out in the city and from the air.

Pick a billboard if you have a product photo, launch art or a screenshot. Billboards come in many shapes, from nearly square to very wide, about nine times wider than tall. You can show your logo or a full-bleed banner, and the checkout shows a live preview shaped like the exact board you picked, so you can drag the image until it's framed the way you want.

Plenty of brands will want both: a window for the logo and a billboard for the product.

How to light a window

1. Open thepillar.io. Tap a window on the tower, or ride the elevator along the faces and pick one. To rent a billboard, head into the city and tap a sign.
2. Sign in with X when asked. You don't need an account to play, only to light a window.
3. Paste your site's address. The Pillar reads your page and fills in your brand name, your logo and a short pitch. Change any of it, or upload your own logo (PNG, JPG, WebP or SVG, up to 400 KB).
4. Add a pricing line if you want one. It's optional and limited to 80 characters.
5. On a billboard, choose between a logo and a full banner, then drag the banner in the preview to frame it.
6. Pay through Stripe. The window lights up a few seconds after the payment goes through.
7. Copy your share link (thepillar.io/w/ plus your spot's id) and post it wherever your customers are.

Make your window work

Most of what makes a window good happens before you pay.

Use a logo that reads at a distance. Players see your window from across a plaza, from a moving car or from a helicopter. A bold mark on a transparent background holds up. Thin text and fine detail turn to mush.

Write the pitch for a stranger. Whoever reads it has never heard of you. "Inventory and purchase orders for Shopify" tells them what you do; "Built different" tells them nothing.

Put a real number in the pricing line. Visitors click more readily when they know the cost. "Free plan, Pro from $19 a month" or "Kits from $24" both work.

Link to a page that matches the pitch. If the pitch talks about a product, link to that product. Add tracking tags to the link, such as ?utm_source=thepillar, so visits from the tower show up in your own analytics. Your link is stored exactly as you type it, tags included.

Choose the floor for the job. A low window is a cheap way to be on the tower at all. Higher up, your window clears the rooftops around the tower and shows from further away. Corner panes cost more and sit at the edge of a face.

Post the share link. Your window works hardest on the day you announce it. A post that says "We're on the tower, floor 23" with the preview card attached gives your followers a reason to come and look.

How visitors find your window

Everyone sees the tower first. The page opens on a wide shot of the city with the tower in the middle, so every visitor starts with your window somewhere in frame.

From there, visitors move. Some ride the elevator, which runs up and down all 80 floors and lets them swipe around all four faces, so they pass window after window at reading distance. Others take a car or a helicopter into the city and pass the billboards on the way. Players also come back each evening for the Golden Window, a free daily hunt that starts at 19:10 New York time, where players search the tower's dark windows for the one hiding a prize. The first finder wins a week on that window with their X avatar on it, which keeps players studying the glass closely.

Visitors also arrive through links. The directory lists every brand on the tower with a link to its spot and to its site. Every share link a brand posts brings its own audience to the tower, and they see the rest of the windows on the way. The game has live multiplayer and a lobby chat, so players often show each other around.

None of these paths guarantees a number of views. Together they mean your window sits where people spend time, rather than where they scroll past.

An example: a small store's first month

Say you run a Shopify store that sells hand-poured candles. Here is one sensible way to try The Pillar.

You pick a window on floor 25, which costs $26 a month. It's cheap, and it sits above the rooftops nearby. You paste your store's address, and The Pillar pulls in your name and logo. You swap the logo for a cleaner version on a transparent background, since your full logo has a thin script line under it that would disappear at a distance.

For the pitch you write "Hand-poured soy candles, made in small batches in Oregon." For the pricing line you write "Candles from $18, free shipping over $50." The link goes to your bestsellers collection, with ?utm_source=thepillar on the end so you can see those visits in Shopify's reports.

Your window lights up a few seconds after you pay. You copy the share link and post it on Instagram and in your newsletter with one line: "We rented a window on a skyscraper in a video game. Floor 25, come find us." A few customers go looking for it, which is the point of the post.

At the end of the month you check two numbers: the view counter on your window and the visits tagged thepillar in your analytics. If a handful of new customers came through and the post got your regulars talking, $26 was cheap. If nothing happened, you release the window, and the experiment cost less than a box of candles.

Who it doesn't suit

Skip the tower if you need a guaranteed number of clicks this month, since nobody can promise that here. Skip it if your product can only be advertised behind an age check, because anyone can open The Pillar without signing in. And skip it if your link would land visitors on a page that isn't ready for strangers yet: fix the page first, then rent the window. A one-month test should be money you can spend without worrying about it. For most small brands that's true at $9 or $4, but it's your call.

What to expect

The Pillar went live in September 2026. It's a new site with a small, growing audience, and we won't promise you a flood of visitors. A window is a cheap, always-on placement in a place people come to play and explore. It works best as one more spot where your brand shows up, with a link you can share, rather than as your main source of sales.

For a thousand clicks by Friday, buy search ads. A window puts your logo where visitors stop and look, for less than a lunch costs.

After a month, judge it on two numbers: the view counter on your window and the visits your tracking tags record. Keep the window if the numbers justify the price, and release it if they don't. Releasing takes about a minute.

Billing, cancelling and refunds

Each window is a monthly licence, charged through Stripe. It renews each month at the same price until you cancel.

You can cancel any time. Release the window from your desk at thepillar.io/desk while signed in, or email [email protected]. Your brand stays up until the end of the month you already paid for, then the pane goes back to the pool. We don't refund part of the current month unless the law requires it.

A price change, if we ever make one, applies to future renewals only, and we tell you first. When you pay and your window can't be lit because of a problem on our side, the payment is refunded automatically and the subscription is cancelled. Charged in error? Email us and we reply within five business days. See the Refunds and billing page for the details.

The rules

Your name, logo and link must be yours to use. No malware, nothing illegal and no pretending to be another person or brand. We can remove a mark or dim a window that breaks these rules. Read the full text on the Acceptable Use page.

Frequently asked questions