Advertise With Us
Advertising is what pays for this newsroom. The site is free to read with no paywall, so the commercial side matters to us and we would like it to work for you. What follows is the offer, and also the rules we apply to it, because the fastest way to waste everyone’s time is to arrive wanting something we do not sell.
Who reads Cover365
Our readers are English-reading Indians, weighted towards their twenties and thirties, plus a steady share of the diaspora who follow home news, films, and cricket from abroad. They arrive on phones, mostly from search and from links passed around in group chats, and they read across our beats rather than sticking to one. The same person opens a Supreme Court explainer, a Telugu release review, and a phone comparison in the same week.
Traffic on a site like ours is event-shaped rather than flat. It climbs on release Fridays, through the domestic and international cricket calendar, around launch weeks in technology, and whenever a national story breaks in the evening. Current figures for sessions, readers, and beat-level splits come from our analytics provider, and we send them with the rate card rather than putting a flattering number on a public page.
What you can buy
Display placements across the site, sold directly by us or filled through the programmatic exchanges that handle our remnant inventory. Direct buys can be targeted by section, so a handset brand sits inside technology coverage, and they can be booked against known events like a series or a release window.
Newsletter sponsorship is one clearly marked slot per send, with the sponsor named in plain language at the top of the block. We do not sell the subject line, we do not sell the editorial selection inside the email, and we do not rent, sell, or share the subscriber list with anyone, sponsors included. Sponsored articles are available too, and the next section explains how they are handled.
How sponsored content works here
Every commercial article carries a label at the top saying who paid for it, in the same size as the furniture around the headline, styled so it does not read as a report. The label stays on the page permanently. These pieces do not appear in our news feeds as news and are excluded from anything we describe as our reporting.
Nobody on the editorial desk writes them. That line runs in both directions: our reporters are not for hire, and a brand cannot buy a piece carrying a reporter’s byline. Sponsored copy comes from the advertiser or from commercial writers who do not work our beats, and we edit it only for accuracy, legality, and readability.
What we will not run
Some of this is specific to covering cricket and cinema in India, where the demand for a news wrapper around a gambling product never lets up. We turn down real-money betting and the offshore brands that advertise through sports-news fronts and lookalike domains, along with surrogate creative whose only purpose is putting a betting name in front of a match audience.
We also refuse instant-loan apps, anything promising guaranteed returns from trading or crypto tips, unproven medical and fertility cures, piracy sites and download links, creative that mimics our own article layout or a system notification, and political advocacy that does not name who is paying for it. Adult products, tobacco, and creative aimed at children are out. If a category is legal but works by misleading a reader, expect a no.
The firewall is a term of business
Buying advertising here purchases attention and nothing else. It does not buy a preview of unpublished coverage, an editorial mention, a veto, a takedown, or the removal of a line an advertiser dislikes. It does not buy protection either: if a brand advertising with us becomes a story, we cover it exactly as we would have otherwise, and we do not warn the brand first.
It also does not buy adjacency to praise. We do not sell placement next to positive coverage of the advertiser, and we do not accept keyword blocklists designed to keep a brand away from critical reporting about itself. We have lost bookings over both and expect to lose more. The reasoning sits on our about page, and the full picture of who owns us and where the money comes from is on ownership and funding.
Booking, data, and reporting
Write to support@cover365.in with ADVERTISING at the front of the subject line, telling us your campaign window, the markets and beats you want, and the formats you are considering. We send the media kit and rate card by email and normally reply within two working days. Direct campaigns are confirmed with a written insertion order, and creative goes through a compliance read before it goes live.
Our programmatic partners and our analytics provider are bound by their own contracts to handle reader data lawfully, and we require consent-based measurement where a reader’s location demands it. What gets set on a reader’s device, and by whom, is described by category in our cookie policy. Direct advertisers get reporting from our ad server at the midpoint and the end of a flight, covering delivery, viewability, and clicks. We report what the server recorded, including the weeks that underperformed.
