macOS menu bar · CPM marketplace
Your menu bar,
paying for itself.
One small labeled ad in the strip of screen people already look at all day. Advertisers pay only for impressions we can verify were seen. The person who saw it keeps 55%.
$0.10 minimum CPM $1 minimum campaign 55% to the person who saw it
Advertise
Launch a campaign in one form
No sales call. $1 minimum. Set your bid, set a hard cap, and your ad enters the rotation as soon as a reviewer approves the creative.
Learn more → linear.app
Live preview · expanded view when clicked · always labeled, always pausable
Earn
Get paid for the strip you already stare at
Install the app, opt in, and one small labeled placement appears in your menu bar. You keep 55% of every verified impression. Nothing counts while you are away, locked or in fullscreen. Pause any time.
Universal build · Apple silicon and Intel · macOS 14+
FAQ
Everything else
How do you verify an impression?
Six checks, all inside one database transaction. If any fails the event is rejected and nobody is charged or paid.
- Server-issued placement. Every display starts with a single-use token from our API, so a client cannot mint its own earnings.
- Minimum display time. At least 8 seconds on screen before it can be reported.
- Awake and unlocked. Sleeping or locked Macs never count.
- Menu bar actually visible. Fullscreen apps hide it, so those minutes are excluded.
- A person is present. Over three minutes without input pauses earning; artificial activity is rate-capped and flagged.
- Budget enforced atomically. Serving stops the instant the cap is reached. Over-delivery is on us.
What does it cost to advertise?
Your CPM is your bid, from $0.10 per 1,000 verified impressions, with a $1 minimum campaign. Higher bids win proportionally more slots against competing campaigns. Your budget is a hard cap enforced at serve time — sleep, lock, fullscreen, idle and duplicate events are all rejected server-side before any billing.
How much do I earn, and when do I get paid?
You keep 55% of every verified impression. Your balance grows per impression, cash out at $10, and payouts run monthly.
What data does the Mac app collect?
Eligibility is decided from OS-level booleans and one idle counter: awake, unlocked, menu bar visible, seconds since last input. No keystrokes, no screen contents, no browsing history, no app usage. Full detail in Privacy.
How intrusive is the ad?
One pill, 24 points tall, in your menu bar. It is always labeled as sponsored, never imitates system notifications or UI, and is one click from pausing. Creatives are human-reviewed before they serve: headline ≤ 80 characters, CTA ≤ 40.
What do I need to run it, and what happens on first launch?
macOS 14 or later, universal binary. We distribute directly rather than through the App Store, so macOS shows a one-time warning:
- Open the downloaded .dmg and drag Menu Money into Applications.
- Open it from Applications. macOS will say it can't verify the developer.
- Open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll to the bottom, and click Open Anyway.
Once only. After that it opens normally and you can turn on "Launch at login" in Settings.