Advertising
tldlog is funded by direct sponsorship. Sponsorships are sold for a set period and served from tldlog itself, with no ad networks, no cookies and no tracking of readers.
Formats
- Fixed banner. A static image, a line of text, or both, in the “sponsored space” box on the home page, on section pages, and on article and link pages. No animation.
- Sponsored block. A block on the home page or on one section page, labeled “sponsored”, with the creative and the sponsor’s name.
- Sponsored piece. A paid piece in the list of news on the home page, labeled “sponsored”. Its headline leads to its own page on tldlog or to the advertiser’s website.
How advertising is kept apart from editorial content
- Sponsored pieces carry the label “sponsored” as part of their headline, so screen readers announce it too. Banners appear in a box labeled “sponsored space”, and sponsored blocks open with the label “sponsored”.
- When a sponsored piece has its own page on tldlog, the page opens with a note saying that it is paid content and not part of our editorial coverage.
- Sponsored pieces never open the list of news on the home page and are never shown as the main story of the day.
- Sponsored pieces are never suggested as related reading.
- In any ten pieces in a row on the home page, at most one is sponsored.
- Every link to an advertiser, in banners, blocks and sponsored pieces, is marked as a sponsored link in the page’s code (
rel="sponsored"), which tells search engines that it is a paid link.
Sponsors have no influence over what we publish. News about a sponsor is handled by the same standards as any other news, and when a piece is about a current sponsor, we say so in it.
Creative specification
Banners and other creatives must:
- Be a static image, plain text, or both, with no animation, sound or moving parts.
- Have a contrast ratio of at least 7 to 1 between text and background, the highest level (AAA) of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. This includes any text inside an image. tldlog does not check the contrast of images automatically, so check it before you send the creative.
- Come with a text alternative that describes what they show, for readers who cannot see images, in every language in which the creative is shown. A creative with an image is shown only in the languages for which it has a text alternative.
- If they include an image, be a WebP, AVIF, JPEG or PNG file of no more than 50,000 bytes (50 KB). Other formats are not accepted.
- Carry a single link, to a secure address (https) on the advertiser’s website.
tldlog stores the files and serves them itself. Creatives cannot contain code or load anything from other websites. These rules exist because creatives are the one part of the site that tldlog does not make, and they must still meet the same accessibility requirements as the rest of the site.
Booking
Prices and the minimum length of a sponsorship are not published: they are given on request. To book a period, or to ask about prices and availability, write to info@tldlog.com.