How advertising here works

Advertising does not track you. Placements are static images and text served from this domain — no ad network, no third-party script, no cookie, no pixel. Everything the Privacy notice says is still true on a page carrying an ad.

Why it is done this way

The obvious way to monetise a calculator site is a display network. We do not use one. A network needs to set cookies, load scripts from another company’s servers, and profile the people reading — which would mean opening up the Content Security Policy that currently blocks every outbound request, and rewriting the privacy notice to say the opposite of what it says now.

That policy is the only claim on this site you can verify yourself, and it is worth more than the difference in revenue. So placements are sold directly, one advertiser at a time, and served as ordinary files.

What a direct sponsor gets, and does not get

• Gets: a labelled placement on pages in a chosen category, for a fixed period, at a fixed price — ahead of any network advertising, which only fills slots nobody has bought.
• Does not get: any data about you. We have none to give. We cannot tell an advertiser who saw a placement, what you typed into a calculator, or whether you are in the market for anything.
• Does not get: a click report from us. If they want to know whether the placement worked, they measure arrivals on their own site, the way any referral is measured.
• Does not get: any say over the calculators, the figures, or what we write.

Labelling

A directly sold placement is marked Sponsored and names the advertiser. Network advertising is marked Advertisement, because we do not know in advance who will appear in it. Both link to this page. Its links carry rel="sponsored nofollow". Nothing paid is ever formatted to resemble a calculator result, a heading, or something we wrote.

There is no native advertising here, no sponsored post presented as editorial, and no paid inclusion in any comparison or list.

An advertisement is not a recommendation

A lender or dealer appearing on a page has paid to appear there. It does not mean we have assessed them, compared them to anyone else, or think they are a good choice for you. We do not make recommendations — nothing here is financial advice — and a paid placement is the last thing that should be read as one.

Rules for financial advertisers

Advertising credit is regulated, and those obligations sit with the advertiser. We enforce them as conditions of running the copy:

• Rates and terms bring disclosures with them. Under the Truth in Lending Act and Regulation Z, an advertisement that states a rate, a payment amount, a term or a down payment triggers further required disclosures — the annual percentage rate among them. Copy that states a triggering term without them does not run.
• Identify yourself. Mortgage advertisers supply an NMLS identifier and the legal name of the licensed entity, and it is printed with the placement. Vehicle advertisers supply their dealer licence details where their state requires it.
• Equal Housing. Copy relating to residential mortgage lending must comply with the Fair Housing Act and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, and must carry the notices those require.
• Flat fees, not per-lead payments for settlement services. Placements are sold for a fixed sum for a fixed period. We do not accept per-lead or per-application compensation for mortgage or other real estate settlement services, which is the arrangement the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act exists to police.
• No teaser pricing. Advertised figures must be available on the terms stated, to the audience stated. “Rates from” copy has to say who qualifies.

We check that required disclosures are present and that the claims are internally consistent. We are not the advertiser’s compliance department and we do not verify that a quoted rate is available — that responsibility, and the liability, remain theirs.

What we will not run

• Payday, title, and other short-term high-cost lending.
• Debt relief, credit repair, and advance-fee loan offers.
• Anything promising a guaranteed approval, rate or return.
• Copy designed to be mistaken for a calculator result, a system message, or editorial content.
• Anything requiring a third-party script, tag or tracking pixel.

Editorial independence

The arithmetic does not change for anyone. Published figures come from the authority that issues them, and every calculator states its limits next to its answer whether or not a sponsor is on the page.

Advertisers do not see anything before it is published, do not get to review what we write about their industry, and cannot buy the removal of something they dislike. If a placement and an article ever contradict each other, the article is the one that stays.

Advertising with us, or complaining about an ad

Both go to the same place: hello@plainnumber.com. If a placement looks misleading, tell us — we would rather lose the revenue than carry it. Placements can be pulled the same day.

Plain Number is operated by Media Yard LLC, which is the party that sells and is paid for these placements.