Advertising disclosure
This site is supported by advertising, and constrained by it in only one direction
Display advertising pays for True Trade Path. It does not buy a ranking, a listing, a badge, a review, a cost range or a sentence of editorial copy. This page sets out what advertisers get, what they can never get, and where advertisements are permitted to appear.
- Last updated
- September 2026
- Revenue source
- Display advertising
- Affiliate revenue
- None
The disclosure, in short
True Trade Path is free to use and is funded by display advertising served through Google AdSense. Advertising is the only source of revenue that touches this site. We do not charge for tools, we do not charge organizations to be listed or verified, we do not run a subscription, we hold no affiliate relationships, and we do not sell leads.
Advertisements are labelled as advertising wherever they appear. The label is present so that no reasonable reader could mistake an advertisement for a tool, a listing, a result or something we have said. If you ever find an advertisement on this site that is not clearly distinguishable from our own content, that is a defect and we want to know about it.
What advertisers cannot influence
The firewall
The separation is structural rather than a matter of good intentions. Advertising is served by a third-party network into fixed slots. The code that orders directory results has no access to advertising data and therefore no way to identify an advertiser. Verification status is set by the check performed on the listing and the date it was performed. Calculator outputs are computed deterministically in your browser from our published data files. None of these paths has a commercial input, which is why none of them can be bought.
Directory ordering is explained input by input on the trust and methodology page, and the conflict-of-interest rules that apply to everyone producing this site are in the editorial policy.
No affiliate revenue, no affiliate rankings
Most product recommendations in this subject area are commission-driven. A list of the best tools for a new apprentice is usually a list of the products that pay the highest commission, ordered accordingly. We took the simpler route of not participating.
- We operate no affiliate program and hold no commission arrangement with any retailer, manufacturer, marketplace, contractor or lender.
- No link on this site earns us a commission when you click it or buy through it.
- Nothing we recommend, rank, compare or include in a tool kit list is selected because of a commercial relationship, because none exists.
- Where we name a product, brand or standard, it is because the specification is relevant to the calculation or the decision. It is not a placement.
- We do not sell links, sponsored posts, guest articles, paid mentions or editorial placement, and enquiries seeking them are declined.
If this changes we will say so here, on the date it changes, and any page carrying a compensated link will disclose it in place rather than in a footer. We consider that unlikely: the value of a recommendation on this site is that it is not for sale, and a commission would consume more of that value than it would return.
Where advertising is allowed to appear
Ad placement is a design decision, and most sites make it in favour of the advertiser. These are the constraints we hold ourselves to instead. They cost us revenue, which is how you can tell they are real.
Never inside a tool
No advertisement appears between a tool's inputs and its results, inside a results panel, or anywhere a reader must scroll past it to finish a calculation. Ad slots sit above the tool, below the completed result, or in a sidebar. A calculator is a single uninterrupted transaction.
Never disguised as content
Advertisements are not formatted to resemble a listing, a tool, a result, a recommendation, a comparison row or a link in our navigation. Anything that looks like part of the product is part of the product.
Never in a safety path
Pages carrying safety-critical instruction — gas, electrical, structural and life-safety content, and the warnings attached to them — carry no advertising adjacent to the warning itself. A caution must not compete with an advertisement for attention.
Never interstitial or blocking
No pop-ups over content, no full-screen interstitials, no countdown gates, no vignettes between pages, and no advertisement that must be dismissed before the page becomes usable.
Fixed, reserved slots
Ad slots occupy reserved space at a declared size so that content does not shift when an advertisement loads. A layout shift that makes you click the wrong thing is an accident engineered for someone else's benefit.
A capped number per page
Slot counts are fixed per template rather than scaled with page length. We do not add advertisements by lengthening pages, and we do not split content across pages to multiply impressions.
Advertising we do not accept
Advertising is served programmatically, which means individual creatives are selected by the network rather than by us. We apply the category and creative controls available to us to exclude advertising that would undermine the purpose of the site, including:
- Lead-generation advertising that collects a visitor’s job details and sells them on to contractors.
- Advertising that imitates a system message, a search result, a download button, a form field or our own interface.
- Advertising for services that require a licence but do not hold one, and for training programs that misrepresent their accreditation.
- Adult content, gambling, predatory lending, and advertising directed at children.
- Automatically playing audio, and creatives that expand over content.
Controls applied upstream are not perfect. If you see an advertisement on this site that falls into any of these categories, send us the page address and a description or screenshot at hello@truetradepath.com and we will block it.
Advertising and your data
Google AdSense sets cookies and may use identifiers to measure and personalise advertising. We do not receive your identity from that process, and we never pass advertising partners anything you type into a tool — calculator inputs are processed entirely in your browser and are never transmitted to us or to anyone else.
We honour the Global Privacy Control signal sent by your browser, and California residents have the right to opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information. What is set, what it is used for, and how to exercise those rights are covered in the privacy policy.