Sponsored links and sponsored banners

A sponsored item in Issue Mint is an ordinary link with a sponsored flag on it. There is one item type and one flag, not a library of block types, and a sponsored item with artwork uploaded to it renders as a full-width banner instead of a headline.

That is the whole model. Everything below is how a booking you have sold through the sponsorship inventory reaches the composer, and how the result is labelled for the reader.

How a confirmed booking reaches the composer

A booking that has been confirmed is attached to whichever issue goes out on the date it was sold for. Once attached, it appears in a Sponsors panel above your links, with the slot type and the price beside it.

Attachment happens from whichever side is second. Scheduling an issue for a date that already has confirmed bookings attaches them then and says so in the confirmation. Confirming a booking for a date that already has a draft or scheduled issue for that day attaches it from the other direction. The dates are compared in your newsletter’s timezone, because the date you sold is a calendar date rather than an instant.

Two things it never does: an issue that has already been sent is never attached to, because a placement that has not run cannot be added retrospectively, and a booking that is not confirmed does not appear at all. A sponsor in your issue covers the selling side of that.

Inserting the sponsor is a decision you make

The Sponsors panel has one button per booking: Add the link, or Add the banner if the slot type is a banner. Pressing it puts the item into the issue. Nothing goes in on its own.

The inserted item takes the sponsor’s name as its title, or the slot type’s name if you have not recorded a name, and the sponsor’s URL as its link. It has no comment yet, which is the next thing to write, and it arrives uncategorised, so it sits after your named sections until you drag it where you want it. Once inserted, the panel says so instead of offering the button again, and pressing twice cannot put the same sponsor in twice.

Banner artwork

Artwork uploads on its own, the moment you choose a file, rather than waiting for a save. It only goes on a sponsored item, because nothing else renders one.

Files up to 2 MB are accepted, and every one is re-encoded on the way in with its longest side capped at 1,200 pixels, which is twice the width a banner renders at in an email. Alt text of up to 250 characters sits beside the file and is worth writing: it is what a reader with images switched off sees in place of the banner your sponsor paid for.

Replacing artwork stores the new file before removing the old one, so a failed upload cannot leave the item pointing at nothing. Remove banner drops the artwork and leaves an ordinary sponsored link behind, with its title and comment intact.

How sponsorship is labelled

Disclosure travels with the item, in all three places an issue appears, and it is not optional.

• In the email, the word Sponsored sits above the item in small capitals.
• On your website, the item carries a Sponsored label, and the link itself is marked as a sponsored link in the markup, which is what search engines read.
• In the plain text part, the title is prefixed with [SPONSORED].

The third one matters more than it looks. A reader whose mail client prefers plain text sees only that part, so a label that existed in the HTML alone would leave those readers with an undisclosed advert.

Sponsored items you did not sell here

The sponsored flag is a checkbox on any link, so an item does not have to come from a booking to be labelled. A swap with another newsletter, a deal invoiced outside Issue Mint, or a link to something you own yourself can all be marked sponsored from the link’s own edit form.

The reverse is also true. Unticking the box takes the label off, and on an item that has artwork it also stops the banner rendering, because a banner is a sponsored item with a picture rather than a thing of its own. What counts as sponsored is a judgement about your own arrangement, and Issue Mint renders that judgement rather than auditing it.