Marketing card

Marketing cards or ad cards, not to be confused with promotional cards, were added to the contents of a booster pack from Tenth Edition on. This sixteenth card was added to the booster packs because the Magic Brand team had discovered that the only way to reach some players with advertising was through booster packs. The advertisements are about Magic-related things and are meant to educate newer players on the many other aspects of Magic.^[1]

Description[ | ]

The cards exist in the booster packs because marketing pays for them. The Brand Team allows R&D to place content on one side of the cards, e.g. game concept relevant information to the specific set (called "Tips & Tricks", or a Rules card), links to useful sites, play aids and tokens.^[2] Because R&D uses “their side” for several different items, and since all tokens are on that side, not every ad card has a token.

The quality of marketing cards is slightly less than that of regular cards.^[3]^[4]

Occurrence[ | ]

While being an approximation, the expected ratio of token cards to other cards used to be:^[5]

1 out of 3 for core sets.
2 out of 3 for expert-level sets.

Battle for Zendikar onwards[ | ]

The ratio between token cards and other marketing cards was shifted heavily in favor of tokens in Battle for Zendikar. The new ratio is "approximately 9:10".