Advertiser Guide

Why Support on My Local Press

Whether you're running an ad or simply backing a journalist you believe in, your dollars go directly to the people covering the news that matters to your neighbors. Advertisers reach the same community that walks through their door. And supporters who don't need the visibility can contribute just as meaningfully.

90% of what you spend goes directly to the journalist or publication you choose to support. The other 10% keeps the platform running.

Two Ways to Advertise

Three Ways to Advertise

When you offer support, you choose how visible you want to be:

Choose Who to Support

When you offer support, you choose where your dollars go:

Choose Where Your Ad Appears

For Full Ad and Minimal Ad tiers, you choose who sees your 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

You set your own budget. Pick an amount and a duration — every ad runs for 30 days, either as a one-time payment or as a monthly auto-renew you can cancel anytime.

Minimums vary by tier and reach: Profile $20, Minimal Ad from $33 (local) up to $599 (global), Full Ad from $49 (local) up to $899 (global). No maximum. Higher spend means more visibility — but every ad gets seen. You'll see a full fee breakdown, including the Stripe processing fee, before you pay.

How Ads Get Seen

For Full Ad and Minimal Ad tiers, we don't sell top placement. Every ad gets shown — your 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 your ad is live, you can see how it's performing. Same metrics page the journalist or publication you're backing uses to track their own work — you both see what your support produced.

What we measure

• Impressions — how many times your ad appeared in feeds.
• Clicks — taps on your ad's headline or body.
• External clicks — taps on your link out to your website, video, or whatever you're pointing readers toward.
• Audio plays — when an ad runs alongside a broadcast, this counts the times someone tapped play. Includes plays from CarPlay — every My Local Press broadcast 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 your ad ran alongside.
• Time windows — view your numbers over the last 7, 30, or 90 days, or all-time.
• Last activity — timestamps so you can see whether the ad is still moving or quiet.

How we count an impression

On web, iOS, and Android, an impression counts once 50% of your 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.