How FFCheck earns money

Pages that never carry a sponsor

This is our hard rule. It is part of every sponsor's contract, word for word:

FFCheck never shows a sponsor, placeholder, affiliate link or any ad on pages about children, suicide, mental health, abuse, medical harm, death, violence, safety emergencies, debt distress, asylum or papers of vulnerable people, or anything similar. When in doubt, a page counts as sensitive.

If a page becomes sensitive, its sponsor block comes off at once.

How sponsorship works

• A sponsor books a seat: one topic in one country. Its block then shows on every language version of that page in that country.
• Each topic has at most one sponsor in each country.
• The sponsor pays a flat fee, monthly or yearly. The fee is the same whatever you do: it does not depend on clicks, views or who you are.
• No ad networks, no pay-per-click, no bidding. We sell every seat ourselves, directly to the business.
• Only businesses can sponsor. We check every sponsor and every text before a block goes live.

What a sponsor block looks like, and where it sits

• The label comes first: the word for advertisement in the page's language, then the sponsor's name.
• The block sits below our answer, the steps and the official contacts, and above the questions. On phones it never appears on the first screen.
• It is a plain block with a visible frame: the sponsor's name, a small logo, a headline, one line and one link. No forms, calculators, rankings or comparisons.
• Everyone sees the same block, search engines included. It is there because of the page's topic, not because of you.
• A comparison site or broker that is paid by commission also says so in its block.

On pages in this language, the label reads:

Advertisement · Sponsored by Example Ltd. Shown because of this page's topic, not because of you. It never changes our answer.

What a sponsor can never do

• Change our answer. A sponsor has no say over the verdict, the steps, the official contacts, the questions or anything else on the page. Free and official routes always come first.
• See data about you. We give sponsors no data about our readers, and they may not ask for any. Their monthly report holds totals only.
• Track you. The block sets no cookies and loads nothing from the sponsor: no pixels, no scripts. We count clicks on the sponsor's link, and may count how often the block is shown, on our own server, without cookies and without storing your IP address.
• Buy a better place on the page, a different verdict or a link that helps it in search engines.

When you click a sponsor's link

The link goes through our own counter and then straight to the sponsor's website. We send no data about you with it, and we do not tell the sponsor which of our pages you came from.

From then on you are on the sponsor's website, and the sponsor's own privacy rules apply, not ours.

Who can never sponsor

We never accept these businesses as sponsors, on any page:

• loans, credit and BNPL; debt collection and debt-relief firms
• gambling; crypto; alcohol, tobacco and vaping; weapons; dating
• supplements, cosmetic medicine, clinics, pharmacies and medical devices
• funeral services
• immigration, visa and permit services
• custody-dispute services
• political parties, campaigns and issue advocacy
• resellers of free or official services (vignettes, ID documents, apostilles)
• lawyers or agencies paid per case, per lead or per click

The conflict rule

A sponsor is never on the other side of the problem you came to solve:

• A sponsor is never from the sector the reader may complain about, claim against or leave, and never sells a product that the page's verdict says is illegal or restricted there.
• Energy pages: no energy supplier on any of them. Comparison sites and brokers only. That also rules out supplying cooperatives, dynamic-tariff suppliers, grid operators, and district-heating or oil/LPG suppliers.
• Telecom pages: no telecom operator.
• Complaint pages: no webshop or courier.
• Garage-dispute and used-car pages: no garage or dealer.
• Travel complaints: no hotel, booking site or tour operator.
• Pages where readers object to cameras: no CCTV seller.
• E-scooters: no e-scooter seller where private e-scooters are banned on public roads (UK).
• Flight: no claim agency anywhere near it.
• Disputes already under way (complaints, luggage, package holiday): no insurer.
• A sponsor's domain never appears in the page's answer, contacts or sources (checked at render and at go-live).

Who we are

FFCheck is a trade name of GOAT Pixels, a sole proprietorship (eenmanszaak) in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, registered with the Dutch Chamber of Commerce as KvK 82724822. Our VAT number (btw) is NL003722987B94.

Our address and email address are on our imprint page.

Does a sponsor block look wrong?

Tell us if a block shows on a page where it should not, if a sponsor seems to break these rules, or if anything in a block looks misleading.

Write to us at the address on our imprint page, with the address of the page. We check every report, and a block that breaks these rules comes off.

Our other income

We also sell paid document packs, such as letters to claim flight compensation, at a flat price and never for a commission. Sponsors have nothing to do with them. The details are in our terms of service.

The full rules for sponsors are in our Seat Terms.

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