Ad transparency
Why you're seeing this ad
Because a business a few miles from you bought that slot from our newsroom. Not because something followed you here.
The short answer
Every ad on this site is sold directly by us to a named local business, for one slot and one date range. There is no ad network in the middle, no auction, and nothing reading your history to decide what you see.
What we never do
- No third-party ad networks, exchanges or real-time bidding.
- No cross-site or cross-app tracking, and no advertising cookies of our own.
- No profiles, audience segments or interest labels about you.
- No selling, renting or sharing of reader data — not to advertisers, not to anyone.
The measurements, in full
- Advertising cookies
- 0
- Third-party ad networks
- 0
- Raw IP addresses stored
- 0
- Session identifier
- Daily rotating hash
- Raw event retention
- 90 days
How an ad gets onto this page
An owner talks to our advertising desk, picks a slot, agrees a date range and sends the artwork. We review it, schedule it, and it runs to everyone who opens that page during those dates. The same ad, in the same place, for every reader — the way a printed page works.
How sponsored work is labelled
Reporting produced through a paid interview partnership carries a Sponsored content label at the top of the story and in every list where it appears. Our newsroom edits it, and the business never controls the final text. If a story is not labelled, nobody paid for it.
What we count about the ad
For each ad we keep two running totals: how many times it was shown and how many times it was clicked. Both are counters attached to the ad, not records about you. A click passes through our server so the total goes up by one, and we hand the business nothing about who clicked.
How we measure readership
Our analytics are our own and deliberately small: page views, and how far readers get through a story. A visit is counted under a hash that rotates every day, built without keeping your raw IP address — so it cannot be stitched into a reading history. Raw events are deleted after ninety days; only aggregate totals remain. If we ever add a third-party measurement or advertising script, it stays behind the consent banner and stays off until you say yes.
Want to be in this space?
Ad slots and sponsored interviews are sold by our newsroom directly, with rates and dates confirmed in writing.