BarterBanner

Search traffic to small sites has fallen, and a niche blog rarely has a
newsletter, an app or a brand to fall back on. BarterBanner is one answer to
that gap: you show recommendation blocks from other participants, earn
credits, and spend them getting your own pages shown elsewhere.

No money changes hands inside the exchange. Credits are earned and spent at a
rate based on the measured quality of each site, so a site sending real
readers earns far more per impression than one sending bots. Every credit
movement is listed in your statement, with the other site named.

The plugin connects your WordPress site to the BarterBanner service at
https://barterbanner.com. You need a free BarterBanner account; see
“External services” below for exactly what is exchanged with it.

What the plugin does

• Adds the widget script to your pages — once per page, however many blocks
  you place.
• Prints the domain verification meta tag, so you can activate your site
  without touching a template.
• Places blocks automatically inside posts, or manually via shortcode or a
  do_action( ‘barterbanner_block’ ) hook for page builders.
• Tells you on its settings page whether the block is actually being shown.

Formats

• Recommendation cards — 1, 3 or 5 per block
• Banners — 300×250, 728×90, 160×600, 320×50, responsive

External services

This plugin relies on the BarterBanner service (https://barterbanner.com),
operated by the BarterBanner project. Nothing is sent until you enter a site
code on the plugin’s settings page.

1. The widget script, in your readers’ browsers

On pages that carry a block, the plugin loads https://barterbanner.com/widget.js.
The script then talks to the BarterBanner API from the reader’s browser:

• to fetch the cards to show (/api/widget/banners): your site code, the
  block formats and the page language;
• for each card, once its block has been seen or the reader leaves the
  page (/api/widget/impression; a view counts when at least half of the
  block, 30% for a very large one, was on screen for one second without a
  break and two seconds in all): the single-use impression key the server
  issued for that card, the view time, whether the rule was met, the widget
  version and the measurements behind that decision (the share of the block
  required and the best share seen, the share of the screen it covered, the
  longest unbroken stretch) and how the block is pinned (not pinned,
  sticky, bottom bar, side column, or pinned by the page’s own CSS);
• when a reader clicks a card (/api/widget/click): that card’s impression
  key;
• on the destination site, if it also runs BarterBanner
  (/api/widget/landing): the click key, that site’s code, how long the
  reader stayed, how many pages of that site they opened in the tab and
  whether they scrolled past half of a page.

As with any web request, the service receives the reader’s IP address,
browser user agent and the page address (Referer). BarterBanner stores
fingerprints of the IP address and of the user agent, made with a secret
key held only on its server (HMAC-SHA-256), not the values themselves; the
page address is not stored. A fingerprint is a pseudonym, not
anonymisation, and is treated as personal data in the privacy policy.

The script sets no cookies and uses no local storage. After a reader clicks
a card, the script on the destination site keeps one page counter in
session storage, which the browser clears when the tab is closed.

2. Page count, from your server (optional)

If “Count pages served” is enabled, your server reports to
https://barterbanner.com/api/widget/pageviews how many pages carried a block:
your site code, the date and the count — once per 25 pages or 30 minutes.
Nothing about readers is sent. You can turn this off on the settings page.

3. Domain verification

The verification token you paste is printed as a meta tag in your pages. The
service reads it from your home page when you press Check in your
BarterBanner dashboard, and again about once a month to confirm the site is
still yours.

• Terms of use: https://barterbanner.com/terms
• Privacy policy: https://barterbanner.com/privacy