Advertising Policy

Hold Out Days is free to read and is paid for commercially. We would rather say exactly how than leave it to be guessed at.

How the site earns money

Two ways, and no others at present.

• Advertising. Advertisements may be displayed on pages of this site, supplied by advertising networks.
• Affiliate links. Some pages link to products or services sold by other companies. Where such a link carries a tracking reference, we may be paid a commission if a reader follows it and buys something. The price you are quoted by the seller is not affected by that commission.

We also buy advertising ourselves, which is how many readers arrive here. That means a measurement tag may be active on a page; the Cookie Policy describes what it may set.

The separation rule

Payment does not decide what we publish. Specifically:

• No advertiser or affiliate partner sees, approves or edits an article before it is published.
• No payment buys a recommendation, a ranking, a score or a position in a list.
• We do not change the substance of advice because a product pays better.
• Where we hold a commercial relationship relevant to what a page discusses, the page says so.

If we cannot write about something honestly while being paid in connection with it, we do not write about it.

What a link from us does and does not mean

A link means we think the destination is worth a reader's time or is relevant to the subject. It is not an endorsement of the seller, a warranty of the product, or a statement that it suits your circumstances. We do not test every product we mention, and where we have not tested something we do not imply that we have.

Decisions about equipment, insurance, medication and anything with a safety dimension should be made on the strength of the supplier's own documentation, the relevant authority's guidance, or a qualified professional — not on the strength of a link.

What we do not accept

• Advertising that imitates editorial content, an official warning, a news report or a public authority.
• Advertising for products we consider unsafe, or that we are not prepared to be associated with.
• Claims of guaranteed outcomes, miracle results or protection from specific events.
• Anything that applies pressure through countdowns, false scarcity or manufactured urgency.
• Advertising aimed at people who are living through an emergency at the moment they read it.

Sponsored material, if it ever appears

We do not currently publish sponsored articles. If that changes, any such article will be labelled at the top, in plain words, before the text begins — not in a footnote and not in a colour nobody reads.

Reader data

We do not sell reader data, and we do not hand lists of readers to advertisers. What advertising providers themselves collect through their own tags is governed by their terms and described in our Privacy Policy.

Complaints about an advertisement

If an advertisement on this site looks misleading, inappropriate or out of place, tell us: [email protected]. Say which page you were on and what you saw, and we will look into it. Networks serve advertisements dynamically, so we may not have seen the one you did.