Advertise in the Pioneer

What the audience actually is

Most papers sell you an estimate. The Pioneer will show you the dashboard.

Facebook Page Insights, July 21 – August 1, 2026. Nineteen stories published across twelve days.

Consistency, not one lucky post

A single story going wide proves nothing. What matters to an advertiser is the floor, and the floor is high. More than half of everything published cleared 9,000 views. The median story drew 9,299. Nine separate stories passed 11,000.

The strongest single story — a sheriff’s race poll — was seen by 7,553 people. Trempealeau County has roughly 30,900 residents.

One honest note about that figure, because you will see the bigger number elsewhere and should know the difference. Facebook reports 18,315 views for that story but 7,553 viewers. Views count every time the post appeared, including repeats. Viewers count people. The Pioneer quotes the smaller number, because it is the true one.

Readers who argue back

Across those twelve days, 19,331 engagements against 160,445 views is an engagement rate of about 12 percent — several times what a page this size normally sees. The 489 comments are the reason. People in this county do not scroll past a story about their own county board. They argue about it, by name, in public, underneath reporting built out of records.

That is the audience an ad sits next to.

What we cannot tell you yet

The print edition has not printed. Five people have asked for a copy, and the first run is 300. We are not going to tell you that 300 copies is mass circulation, because it isn’t, and anyone quoting you confident rural print numbers right now is guessing.

What 300 copies is: a full broadsheet, 332 by 475 millimetres, printed on newsprint and delivered across the county once a month. It costs $939 an issue. The advertising on this page is what pays for it, and whoever is in the first edition is in it permanently.

Rates

Monthly, print and web together. Rates are published so that everyone pays the same and nobody has to wonder what their neighbour was charged.

Nineteen business-card sponsors pay for an entire month of printing. That is two businesses per village.

Founding terms. Sign on before the first press run and your rate is locked for twelve months, whatever happens to circulation. Pay a year up front and the twelfth month is free.

Email the publisher →

What you get online

Rendered below at their real proportions. This is the product, not a description of it. Exact placement, sizes and file rules follow.

Page counts as of August 2, 2026, and you can check them: 39 is exactly the number of URLs in the sitemap. It excludes the 404 page and two pages that are not linked from anywhere and carry no traffic. Article pages accumulate every month and your placement follows them — a sidebar bought today runs beside next month’s stories too, at the same rate.

What is fixed, and what is not

Your unit is yours alone. Placements do not rotate and are not shared. A leaderboard buyer is the only leaderboard on the site — that is why there are two of them and no more.

Nothing follows your readers. The Pioneer runs no ad network, no third-party scripts, no tracking pixels and no cookies. Your image is served from this paper’s own domain like any other picture on the page. That means we cannot offer you click-level retargeting, and it also means nobody is collecting data on the neighbours who read your ad. It is the same privacy promise the paper makes its readers, and it applies to advertising or it is not a promise.

Every unit is labelled. A small “Advertisement” flag sits on each one, as the paper’s standards require. Your link opens in a new tab and carries rel="sponsored", which is what Google asks for and what keeps both of us clean.

Artwork

PNG or JPEG at exactly twice the listed pixel size, so it stays sharp on a phone. Under 150 KB. No animation, no video, no sound, no third-party tag. Send one destination URL with it.

If you have no artwork, we will set it for you at no charge from your logo and a line of copy, and send a proof before it runs. Changes any time, at no charge, within two business days.

What you get back, and exactly how it is counted

At the end of every month, a note with two numbers for your unit: how many times it was properly seen, and how many times somebody clicked it. Here is what those words mean. A number you cannot interrogate is worth nothing, and you are entitled to know the shape of ours before you buy one.

A view counts when at least half of your unit has been on the screen for one continuous second, with the tab in front. Scrolling past it in a blur does not count. A tab opened in the background and never looked at does not count. It counts once per page per browsing session, so a reader who comes back to the same story an hour later in the same sitting is one view, not two.

Clicks are counted here, not in the reader’s browser. Your link points at an address on this site, /notice/ and your campaign name, which records the click and sends the reader straight on to you. Nothing runs in their browser to do it, so it still works with scripts blocked — and it is the same address a QR code in the print edition points at, which means print and web land in one counter instead of two you have to reconcile.

Robots do not count. Views are recorded by a script running in a reader’s browser, and crawlers do not run scripts, so search engines and scrapers never enter the number in the first place. Pages your browser fetched ahead of time and you never opened are thrown out as well. Traffic that arrives from a datacentre — a scraper wearing a browser’s clothes — is flagged and reported to you on its own line rather than quietly deleted, so you can see how large it was and decide for yourself what you think of it.

What we cannot tell you, and will not pretend to. There is no cookie here, no fingerprint, no device identifier of any kind. That is the promise this paper makes its readers on the privacy page, and it either applies to advertising or it is not a promise. The cost of it is real and you should hear it from us rather than work it out later: we cannot tell you how many people saw your unit, only how many times it was properly seen. One reader with the paper open in two tabs counts twice. One reader on a phone at lunch and a laptop after supper counts twice. If somebody quotes you unique humans without a tracker, ask them how.

These numbers will not match Facebook, and they are not meant to. Read the note further up this page about one story drawing 18,315 views but 7,553 viewers — that is the same gap, in the other direction. Facebook counts people and we count properly-seen impressions; the two measure different things and only one of them is ours to verify. Ours is the smaller, duller, checkable number. If a figure ever looks wrong, ask, and we will show you how it was arrived at.

Placement begins within two business days of artwork and payment, and runs month to month. Cancel any time before the next billing date.

The units

Print sizes

Broadsheet, 332 by 475 millimetres trimmed. Live area is 281 by 437 millimetres.

Send artwork as PDF, PNG or JPEG at 300 dpi. If you don’t have artwork, we will set it for you at no charge and send a proof before it prints.

Community notes

For people rather than businesses. A thank-you after a funeral, a memorial, congratulations to a graduate, a ninetieth birthday with the photograph. $25 for text, $40 with a picture. One-off, no commitment.

What advertising does not buy

Advertising never runs disguised as reporting. Paid space is labelled in plain words, as the paper’s standards require.

Buying space here buys nothing in the news columns. If you sponsor this paper and the Pioneer later files a records request on you, the story still runs. That is not the paper being difficult. It is the only reason the reporting is worth anything to your neighbours, and the only reason a space beside it is worth anything to you.

The Pioneer does not accept candidate or political advertising in any election it is covering. Not at any price.

How to buy

Write to publisher@trempealeaupioneer.com with the tier you want. You will get back the deadline for the next edition, the artwork specification and an invoice. No sales call unless you ask for one.