Advertise With Riverdale Standard
Who reads us
Riverdale Standard is read first by people who live and work on the south side of metro Atlanta: Riverdale, Jonesboro, Forest Park, Morrow, Lake City, Lovejoy, the rest of Clayton County, and the neighboring parts of Fayette, Henry and south Fulton. A large share of them work at or around the airport and the logistics, hospitality and transport businesses that surround it, on schedules that put them online early in the morning and late at night. Beyond the local audience, our national desks in business, technology, sports, science, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, auto and gaming draw readers from across the United States.
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 and, for local advertisers, by the share of readers in the south metro.
What we sell
Display placements in and around articles, on the homepage and on section fronts. Sponsorship of a newsletter when we are sending one. Clearly labeled sponsored content. Direct placements for local businesses that want to reach Clayton County readers specifically rather than buy them through a network. That is the whole list.
We do not run full-screen interstitials, auto-playing audio or video with sound, pop-ups that must be dismissed more than once, or formats that shift the page while a reader is trying to read it. During severe weather, a major incident at the airport or another south metro emergency, we strip heavy formats from live coverage and keep those pages light. A reader refreshing a storm update 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. Direct advertisers are told this before they book.
Sponsored content and how it is labeled
Sponsored content carries a label at the top of the piece, in the same position every time, using plain words rather than a euphemism. It names the business that paid for it. It is visually distinct from our journalism, it does not appear in news feeds or section fronts as though it were a story, and it is not written by anyone in the newsroom. Sponsored pieces are never presented as news, analysis, a review or a live update.
We will not run sponsored material styled to look like a government notice, a public safety alert, a school announcement or a weather warning. Those formats are trusted in this community and abused constantly in forwarded screenshots, and we will not lend our pages to the abuse at any price.
What we refuse
Some categories are refused regardless of budget.
- 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 health, financial or legal claims that cannot be substantiated, including get-rich-quick schemes, unregulated investment offers and miracle cures.
- Advertising that uses deceptive design, imitates a system message, or misrepresents what a click will do.
- Advertising that demeans people on the basis of who they are.
Programmatic advertising is filtered by category through the networks we use, and when something slips through we remove it as soon as it is reported. 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 advertisers get and what they do not
Advertisers get placement, reporting on impressions and clicks as our systems record 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, and the relationship is disclosed in the story where it is relevant. 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. Audience information is provided in aggregate only.
Local businesses
If you run a business in Riverdale or elsewhere in the south metro and have never bought digital advertising directly, write to us anyway. We will explain the options in plain terms, help you decide whether a placement makes sense for what you are trying to do, and tell you honestly if it does not. A restaurant on Highway 85, a mechanic in Jonesboro, a childcare center in Morrow, and a law office near the county courthouse are the kind of advertiser we are built for.
Rates and booking
Rates are available on request. They vary by placement, section, duration and whether a campaign is bought directly or through a network, and we would rather quote for what you actually want than post a table that fits nobody. Write to support@riverdalestandard.com with ADVERTISING in the subject line, tell us what you are promoting, who you want to reach and when, and we will reply with options, availability and a quote. Creative specifications and technical requirements are supplied with the quote.
Standards for creative
Ads must be accurately described, load quickly, respect the size of the placement, and comply with applicable advertising law, including disclosure requirements for endorsements and for political and financial advertising. We may decline creative that does not meet these standards, and we may pull a live campaign that breaches them, with a refund for the unused portion where the fault is not the advertiser’s.
