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The proposition

WinAddons is read by people that generic technology marketing seldom reaches: the ones who read release notes, administrators deciding what to deploy, developers building on Azure, gamers following a console and its catalogue, and investors who look past the earnings headline. They are international and English-reading, scattered across every time zone, and they tend to arrive with a precise question and stay for the whole article. If what you sell is relevant to those people and can be advertised truthfully and lawfully, write to support@winaddons.com with ADVERTISING in the subject line.

You will not find audience figures on this page; a number without its definition attached is decoration. Ask, and we will send the most recent full month as our analytics provider reports it, definitions included, broken down by section and by device.

Read this before writing

Advertising here comes with conditions, and the conditions are not up for negotiation, because they are what makes the audience worth reaching in the first place. They are set out below so that nobody spends a week preparing a proposal we will have to decline.

What we run

  • Display advertising. Advertisement units on article pages, section fronts and the homepage, filled by a third-party advertising network that handles the selling, serving, measurement and billing. Campaigns reach WinAddons through that network and its targeting tools; on request we will confirm our placements and site identifiers so that you can find us inside it.
  • Sponsored content. Paid articles, labelled as sponsored at the top and in the byline, visibly different from reporting, and held to the same content rules as advertisements. The people who report the news do not write them, editorial staff write no praise for sponsors, and the labelling follows our editorial standards rather than the sponsor’s wishes.

We run no full-screen interstitials, pop-unders, auto-playing sound, notification prompts or formats that move the page under a reader’s finger. Around a big event, a patch release, an outage, a console launch, pages are kept light on purpose. Someone reloading a story about a failed update on a phone with a single bar of signal is precisely the reader this site exists for, and no campaign justifies making that page fail.

What is not for sale

There is no affiliate shop on WinAddons and there never will be. We sell no links, guest posts, brand mentions, product placements inside stories or edits to stories already published. We sell no place in a review, a roundup, a ranking or a comparison table. We take no money to remove, soften or delay a story. Offers to buy each of these arrive every day, and every one gets the same one-word answer. If a page on this site looks paid for and carries no sponsored label, tell us: it was not paid for, and something has gone wrong.

What we turn away

Some categories are turned away whatever the budget. We block them with the network’s category controls and remove by hand whatever slips through.

  • Creative that imitates a system message, a security warning, an update prompt, a download button or any element of the operating system. On a site about Windows, a fake update prompt is not a grey area; it is the single most harmful advertisement we could run.
  • Offers of software licences, product keys or subscriptions of doubtful legitimacy, and so-called driver updaters, registry cleaners, PC optimisers and tech-support services that trade on fear.
  • Unsubstantiated financial, health or legal claims: get-rich-quick schemes, unregulated investment or trading offers, lending or gambling without a licence.
  • Political advertising that hides who paid for it, advertising for anything unlawful where the reader lives, and anything aimed at children.
  • Advertising that demeans people for who they are, or that lies about what a click will do.

If an advertisement that should not be here reaches you anyway, write to support@winaddons.com with what it promoted, which page carried it and, if possible, a screenshot, and it will be blocked at the network.

What advertisers get, and what they do not

Advertisers get their placement, the impression and click figures the network records, and honest answers about who reads us. What they do not get is any purchase on coverage. No advertiser or sponsor sees editorial copy before publication, learns what stories are in preparation, or has any power to commission, hold back or remove a story. An advertiser that becomes news is covered like anyone else, Microsoft included. Nor do advertisers get reader data: no names, no email addresses, no personal information of any kind goes to advertisers or to the network beyond the technical details our privacy policy describes, and audience figures are supplied only in aggregate. Our ownership and funding page describes the wall between revenue and editorial in full, and prospective advertisers should read it as a description of the company their brand will keep.

Standards for creative

Creative must say truthfully what it is, load fast, fit its slot and obey the advertising law of every market it targets, including what must be disclosed in endorsements and in political, gambling and financial advertising. With readers in many countries, creative that is legal in one market and illegal in another has to be targeted with that in mind. Sponsored content must be factual, must make no claim about a Microsoft product that Microsoft’s own documentation does not bear out, and must not be written to resemble our reporting. Creative that falls short is blocked; a live campaign that breaches these rules is reported to the network and taken off the site.

How to proceed

Email support@winaddons.com with ADVERTISING in the subject line and say who you are, what you are promoting, whom you want to reach, in which markets and when. Within a few business days we will reply with the placements available, how to book them through the network and, for sponsored content, specifications and rates. Advertising correspondence is kept apart from editorial correspondence; nothing said in a sales conversation ever reaches the people writing and editing the news. If your campaign sits outside the rules above, we will tell you so plainly and early, which is how we handle everything else here.