One placement. Written to read as work.
LookingBusy is a parody productivity simulator — press a key and a fake corporate dashboard erupts around you. A sponsorship here is not a banner. It is a single labelled item inside that fiction: an email from your brand, a lunch-and-learn on the calendar, a reward at the end of the run.
The audience
Where they come from: Mostly bored.com and boredbutton.com, with Google search growing.
Who they are: people at a desk, mid-workday, looking for three minutes of escape. The joke only lands if you have sat through the meeting it is about — which makes the audience skew to office and knowledge work.
Figures as of September 8, 2026. Self-reported from our own analytics, not third-party audited. We publish only what we measure — if a number you need is not here, it is because we do not have it yet, and we will say so rather than estimate it. Ask and we will pull what exists.
The three placements
These are live right now, running a house ad for one of our own features. Open the simulator and type for a few seconds to see them in context. The copy below is exactly what runs.
Inbox email
After 6 events — never the first thing on screenOperation Nightjar: recon → breach → exfil → scrub → clear, with a counter-trace you fight off by typing. A different kind of looking busy.
Opens a detail view with your call to action. The reader can dismiss it like any other email.
Calendar lunch & learn
After 12 events — always at 12:00, never marked as a conflictAccepting the invite opens your link. Declining costs the reader nothing.
End-of-run reward
On the survival score, after the run endsOperation Nightjar — the hacker console. Sponsored by us.
The highest-intent moment on the site: the game is over and the reader is already looking at a modal. Discount codes fit naturally here.
What a sponsor gets
- One placement per visitor per session, in the format you pick.
- Your own copy, written by you, in your voice.
- A link with your UTM parameters intact.
- Aggregate impression and click counts. An impression means the placement was actually on screen for at least a second — not merely generated.
- Per-persona targeting if you want it — you can run only in, say, the developer or BigLaw worlds.
- Any data about who saw or clicked. Not an email, not a name, not a location.
- A tracking pixel or third-party script on the page. We do not run any.
- An unlabelled placement. Every one says “Sponsored.”
- Placement during the site’s tense moments — sponsors are held back when the simulated stress peaks.
House rules
These are not negotiable, and they are the reason the format works.
- Everything is labelled. Every placement carries a “Sponsored” tag, and the calendar title carries it in the text itself. This is an FTC requirement and also just the deal we make with readers.
- One per surface, per run. The site is a joke about being overwhelmed. If the sponsorship contributes to that feeling, it has failed.
- No ad networks, ever. No programmatic, no retargeting, no data brokers. That is why the site needs no cookie banner, and we intend to keep it that way.
- We write nothing on your behalf. You supply the copy and the link. We will tell you if a line will not land in context, but we do not invent claims for you.
- We can say no. Anything that would embarrass a reader who clicked it at work is not a fit.
Rates
Monthly flat rate per placement — no CPM, no auction. Pricing depends on which of the three you want and whether you want every persona or just one, so it is a short email rather than a table. Tell us what you sell and who you are trying to reach and you will get a number back, along with the current traffic figures.
Email [email protected] →