Advertise With Us

Who reads us

Riverdale Standard is read by people who want the whole story, across ten subjects: world news, business, technology, science, sports, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, auto and gaming. Our audience is international and English-reading, with no single home market and no dominant country, and it skews toward readers who arrive with a specific question and stay to read the whole piece. A reader who comes for a match report will often move on to a recall notice or a film release; the desks feed each other.

We do not print audience figures on this page, because a number without its definition is decoration. Ask, and we will send what our analytics provider reports for the most recent full month, with the definitions attached, broken down by section, device and region.

What we run

Display banner units in and around articles, on the homepage and on section fronts. That is the whole list. The units are filled through the Adsterra advertising network, which handles selling, serving, measurement and billing. If you want your campaign to appear on Riverdale Standard, the route is through that network and its targeting tools; we can confirm our placements and our site identifiers on request so you can find us there.

We do not run full-screen interstitials, pop-unders, auto-playing audio or video with sound, notification prompts, social bars, pop-ups that must be dismissed more than once, or formats that shift the page while a reader is trying to read it. During a live event such as an election night, a final, a launch or a disaster, we keep those pages light. A reader refreshing a story on a phone with one bar of signal is exactly the reader we built the site for, and no campaign is worth making that page fail to load.

What we do not sell

We do not sell sponsored content, native articles, advertorials or branded posts. We do not sell links, guest posts, brand mentions, product placements in stories, or edits to existing stories. We do not sell inclusion in reviews, roundups, rankings, gift guides or destination lists. We do not accept payment to remove, soften or delay a story. Emails offering to buy any of these arrive daily, and every one of them receives the same reply, which is no. If you see a page on this site that looks like it was paid for, tell us, because it was not and something is wrong.

What we refuse

Some categories are refused regardless of budget, and we filter them through the network’s category controls and remove them by hand when they slip through.

• Political advertising that does not clearly disclose who paid for it, and any political advertising that makes claims we know to be false.
• Advertising for products or services that are illegal where the reader is, and advertising aimed at children.
• Advertising that makes financial, health or legal claims that cannot be substantiated, including get-rich-quick schemes, unregulated investment and trading offers, unlicensed lending, unlicensed gambling and miracle cures.
• Advertising that uses deceptive design, imitates a system message, a security warning or a download button, or misrepresents what a click will do.
• Advertising that demeans people on the basis of who they are.

If you see an ad on this site that you believe should not be there, tell us at support@riverdalestandard.com and include what it was for, what page it was on and, if you can, a screenshot. It will be blocked at the network level.

What advertisers get and what they do not

Advertisers get placement, reporting on impressions and clicks as the network records them, and honest answers about our audience. They do not get influence over coverage. No advertiser sees a story before it runs, is told what is coming, or can commission, delay or remove a story. If an advertiser becomes the subject of reporting, they are reported on like anyone else. Our ownership and funding page describes how this separation is kept.

Advertisers also do not get reader data. We do not share email addresses, names or any other personal information with advertisers or with the network beyond the technical information described in our privacy policy. Audience information is provided in aggregate only.

Direct inquiries

If you want to reach our readers, write to support@riverdalestandard.com with ADVERTISING in the subject line, tell us what you are promoting, who you want to reach, in which countries and when, and we will explain how to book against our inventory through the network and what placements exist. We will also tell you honestly if we think the placement will not do what you want. We do not currently sell placements directly; if that changes, this page and the ownership and funding page will say so first.

Standards for creative

Ads must be accurately described, load quickly, respect the size of the placement, and comply with applicable advertising law in every market they target, including disclosure requirements for endorsements and for political, gambling and financial advertising. Because our readers are in many countries, a creative that is lawful in one market and not in another must be targeted accordingly. Creative that does not meet these standards is blocked, and a live campaign that breaches them is reported to the network and removed from the site.

Sales mail and the newsroom

Advertising mail is handled separately from editorial mail, and nothing said in a sales conversation reaches the people who write and edit stories. A company that has advertised, or is thinking about it, gets the same access to the newsroom as any other company, which is the ordinary access of a source: it can pitch a story, answer questions, and be quoted. It cannot buy anything else, and we would rather lose the campaign than pretend otherwise.