Yes and no, and the distinction is the whole answer.
A store can buy a slot on Home. Limited in number, and every one is labelled Promoted to you.
A store cannot buy a position in the live list, the upcoming list, or your browse results. Those are ordered by viewers, by start time, or by whatever you chose — and nothing purchasable is in any of those orderings. How are shows ordered?
What is actually on sale
Stores can buy, among other things:
- A live boost, by the half-hour, hour or three hours, while they are on air
- An upcoming-show boost, until the show starts
- A listing boost, by the day
- A Home banner, by the day — these are reviewed by the Metzee team before they appear
- An alert to an audience, priced per thousand buyers reached
Prices are set in the app rather than here, because a figure in a blog post goes stale the first time one changes.
Why I am comfortable telling you this
Because the labelling is not a courtesy, it is built in. The seller's own boost screen says it before they pay: buyers see the show labelled Promoted. A store buying one knows exactly what it buys.
And because the thing it buys is attention, not credibility. A promoted show has the same ratings, the same returns policy and the same dispute route as any other. Money moves it in front of you; it does not make it better, and nothing about it changes if you bid.
What a boost cannot do
It cannot make a store look verified when it is not. The badges are earned on sales and checks, not bought. How sellers are checked before they can sell
It cannot remove a rating or hide a review.
It cannot put a store into your area if it does not deliver there.
If you would rather not see them
They are labelled, so you can skip them. The live and upcoming lists are not promoted at all, so browsing from there is a feed with no paid placement in it whatsoever.
For sellers thinking about one
The honest advice: a boost multiplies whatever your show already is. A good show gets more people; a show with nothing happening in it gets more people leaving.
So spend on it after you know your sell-through, not before. What is sell-through?
More: how we make money, how are shows ordered, what Metzee will not do.