How to tell an ad apart
Every ad on this site:
- carries the word Sponsored, in a box of its own;
- sits outside the lists of programs, never as a row inside one;
- has its link marked as paid, so search engines treat it as an advertisement and not as a recommendation from us;
- links back to this page, so you can check any of it in one tap.
If something on this site is paid for and does not look like that, it is a mistake. Tell us and we will fix it.
What advertising does not buy
- A place in a list. State pages sort by name, by city, or by distance from a ZIP code. The concierge sorts by how many of your answers a listing matches, then by distance. An advertiser goes through the same sort as everyone else.
- A change to a listing. What a listing says comes from public data and from the program itself through the provider portal. Money does not add a badge, a claim or a label.
- Removal of anybody else. An advertiser cannot have a competitor's listing changed, moved or taken down.
- Anything about you. We do not sell leads and we do not sell or share information about the people who use this site. An advertiser is buying space on a page, not a person. The privacy page says what the site collects, which is very little.
How it is priced
A flat price for a period of time. Never by the call, the form, the lead or the admission. This is deliberate: in addiction treatment, paying per patient is how people end up in the program that paid the most rather than the program that fits, and several state and federal laws exist because of it.
What we will not run
- An ad that promises an outcome: a guarantee, a cure, a success rate, a "best" or "number one" claim.
- An ad that promises coverage, a price or a bed we cannot stand behind, including "we accept all insurance" and "free treatment".
- An ad that is made to look like a listing, a search result or something we wrote.
- An ad for a service that is not licensed where it says it operates, or that we have reason to think is unsafe.
- Anything aimed at a person in crisis instead of at somebody doing research.
The build refuses ad copy that breaks the first two rules, so it cannot reach the site by accident.
Where ads appear
Below the tools on the home page, and on state and program pages, at most one to a page. A page never opens with an ad, and the crisis lines are never next to one.
Buying a slot
Write to us through the contact page. Tell us the company, where you would like the ad to appear, and what you want it to say. We will say yes or no, and if we say no we will tell you which rule it broke.
Our email address is being set up. Until it is ready, we cannot take questions or corrections by email. Please check back soon.
If you need help now, call 911 if someone may be overdosing or is in danger. For a mental health or substance use crisis, call or text 988.
If we change this
Our editorial policy and our about page describe the same rules from the reader's side. If what we sell changes, all three pages change on the same day, and this page will say what changed.