Ad policy

If you clicked here from a bubble

You saw a small panel open from an underlined word in an article. That panel is an advertisement, which is why it is labelled "Ad". A business paid to attach it to that particular word on that particular site for this month.

It was not chosen because of anything about you. AdBubbles sets no cookie, stores no identifier, and collects no personal data from readers, so nothing was known about you when the bubble opened. It matched the word, and nothing else. The privacy policy covers this in full.

Every ad is read by a person before it runs

There is no automatic approval. A person reviews each headline, body, display domain, and destination before it goes live, and a campaign rejected in review is refunded in full. Destination URLs are checked when a campaign is saved and re-checked weekly.

What is not accepted

Six categories are prohibited outright, on every site in the network: gambling, adult content, weapons, cryptocurrency, supplements, and political advertising. Publishers may exclude further categories on their own sites, and those exclusions are applied before anything reaches a page.

Creative rules apply to what is left: no all-capitals, no emoji, one link, and a category from a fixed list. A headline runs to at most 40 characters and a body to at most 90. A bubble carries no image.

Labelling

Every bubble carries the word "Ad" and the advertiser's display domain, and the advertiser cannot change or move either. Every link carries rel="sponsored noopener", which tells search engines the link is paid and keeps the destination from reaching back into the page it came from.

Reporting an ad

An ad that appears to break this policy can be reported to [email protected]. The site it appeared on and the underlined word are enough to identify it. A campaign removed for a policy breach part-way through a period is refunded pro rata for the days it did not run.