Advertiser Guide

Why Support on My Local Press

Whether an advertiser is running an ad or simply backing a journalist they believe in, their dollars go directly to the people covering the news that matters to local readers. Advertisers reach the same community that buys their products or services. And supporters who don't need the visibility can contribute just as meaningfully.

90% of what a supporter spends goes directly to the journalist or publication they choose to support. The other 10% keeps the platform running.

Two Ways to Get Started

Support Tiers

When offering support, an advertiser chooses how visible they want to be:

Choose Who to Support

When offering support, an advertiser chooses where their dollars go:

Choosing Where an Ad Appears

For Full Ad and Minimal Ad tiers, the advertiser chooses who sees the ad:

• Local area — readers within about 30 miles of a specific location (ideal for local businesses)
• State — all readers in a specific state
• Country — all readers in a specific country
• Global — all readers everywhere

Pricing

The advertiser sets their own budget — an amount and a duration. Every ad runs for 30 days, either as a one-time payment or as a monthly auto-renew that can be canceled anytime.

Minimums vary by tier and reach — see the full ladder on How Payments Work. No maximum. Higher spend means more visibility — but every ad gets seen. A full fee breakdown, including the Stripe processing fee, appears before payment.

How Ads Get Seen

For Full Ad and Minimal Ad tiers, we don't sell top placement. Every ad gets shown — the advertiser's budget determines how often, not whether.

The goal is a marketplace where every advertiser gets value, not one where the biggest spender drowns everyone out.

Ad Metrics

Once an ad is live, the advertiser can see how it's performing — the same metrics page the journalist or publication they're backing uses to track their own work. Both see what the support produced.

What we measure

• Impressions — how many times the ad appeared in feeds.
• Clicks — taps on the ad's headline or body.
• External clicks — taps on the link out to the advertiser's website, video, or wherever they're pointing readers.
• Audio plays — when an ad runs alongside a podcast or narrated story, this counts the times someone tapped play. Includes plays from CarPlay — My Local Press audio is auto-transcribed and available in the car, and a play in the car counts the same as a play in the app.
• Audio listens (≥30s) — when a listener stays through at least 30 seconds. The threshold most podcast platforms use to distinguish a real listen from a misclick.
• Engagement rates — respect rate, save rate, share reach. How readers reacted to the work the ad ran alongside.
• Time windows — numbers over the last 7, 30, or 90 days, or all-time.
• Last activity — timestamps that show whether the ad is still moving or quiet.

How we count an impression

On web, iOS, and Android, an impression counts once 50% of an ad's pixels have been visible for at least one continuous second. An ad that scrolls past in a blur doesn't count. An ad that's collapsed off-screen doesn't count.

We also de-duplicate within a session, so a single reader scrolling back over the same ad isn't counted as two impressions.

What's aggregated

Today's dashboard shows totals across all platforms together — web, iOS, and Android counts roll into the same impression number. Audio plays from the car (CarPlay) roll into the same play count, not broken out separately. Per-platform breakdown is something we'll add as advertisers ask for it.