Advertising your event

Featured on Run This

A featured event appears in the Featured rail on the Run This Races page, in the featured carousel in the Run This app, in the featured slot of the Run This Warmup email, and at the top of your race's own city and state pages under /races with a Featured badge. It's self-serve. You upload the creative, choose how many days it runs, and pay as you go.

Pricing is a flat $2.00 per day for all of those placements together. Money goes to Run This. You choose the number of days; it defaults to running through your event date.

1. Open Advertise

   From your event's director dashboard, click Advertise under Marketing in the left sidebar.

2. Add your images

   Click Set up your feature (or Edit) and upload a card image, 1280×720 (16:9) looks best. It covers the Races page rail, the app carousel, and the Warmup email. You can also add an optional tall image for the city and state pages, 320×1200 (4:15), which runs edge to edge in the side rails like a poster. Without one, we build that ad automatically from your images and icon. A switch controls whether your date, race name, location, and distances print over the ad: leave it on for the automatic ad, or turn it off when your uploaded image already carries its own text. Save.

3. Feature your event

   Click Feature this event, pick how many days to run, and pay. Your event goes live in the Races page rail right away. The city and state pages rebuild on a daily cycle, so your Featured badge shows up there within a day.

4. Watch your results

   The feature panel shows live impressions (times it was shown), clicks (times someone tapped through), conversions (registrations from those clicks), bookmarks, days remaining, and total paid. These count real athlete engagement only. When you, a co-director, or Run This staff view or tap your own ad, nothing is added, so checking on your own feature never inflates the numbers you are paying for.

If your ad stops early, you get the unspent money back

Every boost splits into two parts, both shown to you before you pay: the ad budget that goes to Facebook and Instagram, and the management fee that covers Run This building, targeting and running the ad.

Meta charges Run This as your ad delivers, not up front. So if your ad stops before it spends its whole budget, whether because registration closed, your race filled up, you cancelled, or Run This stopped it, the unspent ad budget was never spent at all. It goes back to the card you paid with automatically, and we email you when it does. It can take a few business days to appear.

The management fee is not refunded once the ad has started running, because the work of building and placing it is done. If your ad never ran at all, you get the entire price back, fee included.

Need a longer run? Open Buy more days at any time, purchased days add on to whatever you already have. You can pause and resume from Edit without losing your remaining days.

Boost your race on Facebook and Instagram

Boost builds and runs a real Facebook and Instagram ad for your race, from Run This's own Meta account. You pick a photo and a budget, pay Run This once by card, and the ad goes live within a day or two, no Facebook account, no ad account, and no leaving Run This.

Boost is offered on live events that take their registrations on Run This, while registration is open and there are at least 3 days left to run the ad. A paid race also needs a payout account connected. One more thing catches people out: the event has to be Public. A private or hidden event is deliberately kept out of search, and the ad would be showing to strangers the very thing you asked us to hide, so Boost is not offered until you set its visibility to Public under Edit event. Whenever Boost is unavailable, the Advertise page says which of these is the reason.

You choose the budget, anything from $50 to $500, and how many days the ad runs. 80% of what you pay is the ad budget that goes to Facebook and Instagram; 20% covers Run This building, submitting and watching the ad and refunding what Meta does not spend. The page shows both numbers in dollars as you move the slider, plus roughly what the ad spends each day. Three points on the dial, as a guide:

• $100: $80 to ads, $20 to Run This. A short push to a local audience.
• $250: $200 to ads, $50 to Run This. Two to three weeks of steady reach.
• $500: $400 to ads, $100 to Run This. The strongest push, for a big race or a slow-selling one.

Meta paces the ad budget evenly across the days you chose and never bills more than the total, so a three-week boost cannot be spent in three days. The shortest run is 3 days; the longest is your event window (up to 45 days), shortened only when the budget would fall under Meta's $5 a day floor for an optimized ad. Every step carries short “how this works” sections you can open beside the thing they explain: how Meta spends, where the ad runs, who sees it, what Run This keeps, when it starts, and what happens to your money.

1. Open Advertise

   From your event's director dashboard, click Advertise under Marketing in the left sidebar.

2. Read what you are buying

   Click Boost my race. The builder opens on its own page, as four steps you work through one at a time: what you are buying, your ad, your budget, and who sees it. A bar at the top tracks how many are left, and each step has a Looks good button that checks it off and opens the next. The Pay button stays locked until all four are checked off, so nothing is bought before it has been read.

3. Choose your ad

   Pick a photo: one of your event's own images (your header photo, your featured creative, a gallery photo, or your event logo) or click Upload to use a photo straight off your computer. Or use a video: one clip, up to 60 seconds and 100 MB, which Facebook and Instagram fit to every placement themselves. Choose whether Run This prints your race name, date, and price over the image, and edit the headline and the text above the image if you want. The preview shows your ad at phone size, inside a Facebook or Instagram post with the headline, text and Sign up button, and it updates as you type. Use the Facebook and Instagram buttons above it to see both, and Full size image to open the exact picture that runs.

4. Adjust the crop for each shape

   Facebook and Instagram use three shapes from the same photo: a square and a tall version for the feeds, and a very tall version for Stories and Reels. All three sit above the preview as small pictures; click one to see that shape full size. Run This crops all three for you, aiming at the busiest part of the picture. If a crop cuts something you care about, pick that shape, click Adjust crop under the preview, drag and zoom to frame it yourself, and click Use this crop. Your framing replaces the automatic one for that shape only, and Reset crop puts it back. Picking a different photo clears any crops you set, since a crop belongs to the photo it came from.

5. Choose where it runs and who sees it

   The audience step opens on the default: within 25 miles of your venue, ages 18 to 65, everyone. Add more places (a city, an address, a whole state, or nationwide), set each one's radius from 5 to 50 miles on the map, narrow by age or gender, add interests such as trail running or triathlon, and ask for people like your own past registrants. Leaving the step alone keeps the default. Your ad never reaches anyone already registered for your race, paid or free.

6. Pick a budget, a run length, and pay

   Set the budget on the slider, choose how many days it runs, agree to the Boost advertising terms, and pay by card. Run This builds the campaign against your event's own page (name, date, price, and a Register button linking straight to it) and submits it to Meta. If you leave before paying, nothing is charged, and what you set up is kept: come back to Advertise and press Boost my race again and it is all still there. Any unfinished boost also shows on your Advertise page with a Remove link for a day, then clears itself.

7. Run This looks at your own photos and videos first

   If your ad uses a photo you uploaded, a crop you framed yourself, or a video, someone at Run This looks at it before anything is sent to Meta, usually within a day. The ad runs under the Run This name, so this is our check that it is something we can put our name on. Nothing goes to Meta until it is approved. If we need a change, you get an email and a push with the reason, and a Fix it and send it back link on your Advertise page opens the same ad so you can change it; no second payment. If we cannot run it at all, the boost is refunded in full. Ads built only from your event's own published photos skip this step.

8. Meta reviews it

   Every ad goes through Meta's review, usually within a day, sometimes longer. If Meta declines your ad, Run This refunds the boost in full.

9. It runs, and stops on its own

   Your ad ends when registration closes or when the race starts, whichever comes first. It never runs past your event. Run This also stops it early if your race fills up, or if you cancel or postpone it, so you are never paying to advertise a race nobody can enter.

10. Watch your results

    The Boost card on your Advertise page shows each boost's status, plus spend against your ad budget, people reached, clicks, and registrations that Meta attributes to the ad, with what each click and signup cost. The figures come from Meta and can lag by a few hours, so the card says when it last checked.

Unless you change the audience, Boost aims your ad at runners near your race, people who've already viewed your event page, and people similar to past Run This registrants, so it's reaching the athletes most likely to sign up rather than a random audience. Anyone who has already registered for your race is left out, whether they paid or entered free, so your budget never chases someone who is already in.

Boost is a newer product and Run This hasn't turned it on for every event yet. If it isn't available on your event's Advertise page, click Contact Run This to start and our team can still create and run Meta ads for your race by hand.

Email Run This athletes

We'll work with you to craft an email that goes out from Run This to athletes in your community, designed to connect, inspire, and drive registrations.

• Simple pricing: $30 per thousand emails sent.
• We average around a 60% open rate on single-send marketing emails.
• We compose the email and confirm it with you before anything sends.
• Your send is scheduled at a timely moment that works alongside other Run This emails.

Click Contact Run This to start on the email card to get going.