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Advertiser terms

Version 2026-10-27

These terms are for paid ads on AskRobots search. They add to our general Terms and Privacy Policy; where they say something different about ads, these terms apply. Paid ads are invite-only for now.

You pay only for valid clicks

  • You are charged for a click on your ad only when it is a valid click. Showing your ad costs nothing.
  • A click costs at least 5¢ and never more than your maximum bid.
  • When several ads fit a search, they are ranked by bid × fit (how well each ad fits the search). The winner pays just enough to beat the next ad, rounded up to the cent, never less than 5¢ and never more than its bid. An ad with no competition pays 5¢. A well-fitting ad can win with a lower bid.
  • The price is public. Next to your ad, people see what a click on it costs, for example “Ad · $0.25 a click”. That is the price you pay for that click, worked out as above, not your maximum bid. By advertising, you agree to it being shown.
  • Your ad is shown only on searches it fits. Fit comes from how well its keywords match the words of the search, whether the top results are on its topic, and the kind of search. A high bid never puts an ad on a search it doesn't fit, and ads are not shown when someone searches for another company's site by name.
  • We don't promise any number of times shown, clicks, visits or sales.
  • A daily budget, if you set one, is at least $1. Days run on UTC. Once a day's charges reach the budget, your ads stop showing and no more clicks are charged until the next day.

Your balance

  • Ads are paid from a prepaid balance on your askrobots.com account. The first deposit for ads is at least $25.
  • Clicks never take your balance below zero. When the balance can't pay for the next click, your ads stop showing until you add more. The same balance pays for anything else you use on AskRobots.
  • Your ads dashboard shows a daily statement (times shown, clicks, invalid clicks, charges, credits and balance) and lets you download your clicks as a CSV file.
  • Refunds: the unused part of your balance is refundable on request, to the card it came from. Write to info@askrobots.com.
  • Promotional credit: we don't give any today. If we do, it is spent before the money you paid in, expires 12 months after we give it (or on the date we tell you, if earlier), and is never refunded or paid out.
  • Unused balances: if your account has no deposits, ad clicks or sign-ins for 24 months, we email you before doing anything with the balance. A balance nobody claims is handled as Texas unclaimed-property law requires.

Invalid clicks are not charged

Every click on an ad is checked before it is charged. The person is still taken to your site, but a click is not charged when it looks like one of these:

  • the same shown ad clicked again (a link reused or replayed);
  • a bot, crawler or link preview, or a browser loading the link ahead of time;
  • a click too soon after the page appeared to be a person's, or long after the ad was shown;
  • a click from a data centre or hosting network rather than a person's connection;
  • repeat clicks on your ad from the same connection or network on the same day;
  • a click we can't match to an ad we really showed, or whose price or signature doesn't check out.

Some invalid clicks only show over time. Every day we check the last 7 days of charged clicks again, for bursts of clicks, click rates far above an ad's normal and many clicks from one network, and credit back the ones we find. Credits appear on your statement.

We don't publish the exact limits we use: they would help people get around them.

Asking for a review of your clicks

If you think clicks on a day were invalid, you can ask us to review that day's clicks within 30 days. Write to info@askrobots.com with the day and the ad. We check our records of every ad shown and every click; these records are only ever added to, never edited. AskRobots decides the review, and credits your balance for any invalid clicks it finds.

Card disputes (chargebacks)

  • When one of your card payments to AskRobots is disputed, your ads pause while the dispute is open.
  • If the dispute is decided for the card holder, the disputed amount of a payment that went into your balance comes off your balance, even below zero, and your ads stay off until that is paid back.
  • If it is decided for AskRobots, your ads resume.
  • AskRobots currently pays the card processor's dispute fee; it is not taken from your balance.
  • Please write to us before disputing a payment: an unused balance can be refunded without a dispute.

Your ads

  • Ads are always labelled as ads, so they can't be mistaken for search results.
  • Every ad and keyword is reviewed and approved before it is shown. AskRobots may refuse or remove any ad or keyword, at any time.
  • Appeals: if we reject your ad or a keyword, the review note says why. To ask us to look again, edit the ad and send it for review, or write to info@askrobots.com with the ad's name. A different person reviews an appeal when we can.
  • You are responsible for your ad and the page it links to: they must be accurate and lawful, and the page must be one you may advertise.
  • Trademarks: don't use another company's trademark in your ad or keywords unless you have the right to. To complain about an ad that uses your trademark, write to info@askrobots.com with the ad and the mark; we may pause the ad while we look.
  • Landing pages: the page your ad links to must match the ad. It may not start a download by itself, open pop-ups, ask for browser permissions (notifications, location, camera and the like), fingerprint visitors, or be a doorway or arbitrage page (a page that exists only to send people on or to show other ads). It must show us the same page it shows visitors (no cloaking).
  • Paying for ads never changes where any site appears in the search results.
  • People can hide an ad they don't want to see.

What may not be advertised

Not allowed: gambling; adult content; weapons, ammunition and their parts; tobacco and vaping; payday loans; malware and deceptive downloads; counterfeit goods; health or medical claims (cures, treatments, weight loss); political and issue ads (for now).

Allowed only after a closer review, and we may ask who you are first: crypto and stablecoins, and other financial services. A crypto or stablecoin ad may not claim government backing, FDIC or other deposit insurance, or that a coin is legal tender, and must follow the GENIUS Act and other laws that apply to it.

Who sees ads

  • On askrobots.com, ads are shown only to visitors who aren't signed in. Signed-in people, including everyone who pays us, see none. Ads also appear on search.askrobots.com and on sites that show our ad unit.
  • Ads never run on searches or pages about gambling, adult content or dating.
  • Ads may not be aimed at children, and we never target anyone by age or anything else about them.

Who may advertise

  • You can't advertise with us if you, your business or its owners are in a country or region under US sanctions (OFAC), or on a US sanctions list.
  • For crypto, financial services and other categories that need a closer review, we may ask for proof of who you are and of any licence you need, and keep your ads off until we have it.
  • We can't take payments from advertisers in Texas yet.

Liability and disputes

  • You are responsible for your ads, your keywords and your landing pages, and you agree to cover AskRobots for claims, losses and costs (including reasonable lawyers' fees) that come from them, such as a trademark or false-advertising claim.
  • To the extent the law allows, AskRobots's total liability to you for anything to do with ads is limited to what you paid us for ads in the 3 months before the claim.
  • These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Texas. Disputes are resolved as our general Terms say; any court case allowed under them goes to the state or federal courts in Harris County, Texas.

What we keep about the people who click

  • Ads are matched to the words of the search, not to the person searching. We build no profiles of searchers.
  • We never store a clicker's IP address. The click log keeps only a scrambled code (a keyed hash) of the address and of its network, made with a key that changes every day, so a click can be checked against others from the same day. After 30 days the codes are erased and the day's key deleted, so old clicks can't be linked to each other or to an address.
  • Your statement and click file show the time, ad, place shown, price and whether each click was charged and why. They hold nothing about the person who clicked.

Changes to these terms

We may change these terms. Changes are posted on this page with the date and don't apply to clicks charged before then.

Contact

AskRobots, 4236 Feagan St, Houston, Texas 77007 · info@askrobots.com · 713-234-5606