Advert Disclosure

You are reading a free website that costs money to run. This page explains, plainly, where that money comes from and — more importantly — what it does not buy.

Where the money comes from

Adverts on the page. We sell advertising space through Google Ad Manager. Some of those adverts we sell directly to institutions and organisations; others come through Google’s advertising network and are chosen automatically.
Institution listings. An institution can pay us for a fuller page of its own — a full description, pictures, a prospectus and a direct enquiry button. Claiming a listing is always free; those extras are what is paid for.
Featured placements. Separately, an institution can pay for a labelled position at the top of one particular list, or for a slide on the home page. Both are described below.

What that money does not buy

This is the part that matters, so we will be specific.

It does not buy editorial coverage. Career profiles and qualification pages are written by us, from our own research. No institution can pay to appear in one, to be described more favourably in one, or to be left out of one.
It does not change a fact. Not an entry requirement, not a salary figure, not an accreditation status, not a warning.
It does not remove or demote a competitor. Nobody can pay us to hide another institution.
It does not buy a free listing. Most listings on this site were compiled by us from public sources, cost the institution nothing, and are published whether or not that institution ever pays us anything. We do not hold a listing back in order to sell one.
It does not decide who is in “Where can I study this?” That list is every institution we hold data for that offers the qualification, whether they pay us or not. What a paid placement can do is put one of them first and label it — and on a career page, where we show the first eight and link to the rest, take one of those eight.
It does not buy a search result. Search is ordered by how well a result matches what you typed, and no placement can move a result up it. Where two results match equally well, the directory order below breaks the tie.

If any of that ever stops being true, this page changes first.

How we label paid things

You see	It means
Sponsored	Heads the block of institutions at the top of a list. Every institution in that block paid for its position there.
Featured	On an institution: it paid for that position on that particular page, for that period.
Advertisement	Advertising space. When we have no advert to show, or you have refused advertising cookies, it holds one of our own promotions instead.
Paid placement	May be a slide on the home page that an institution paid for.

If it is paid, it says so, in words, next to the thing itself — not only on this page.

How the directory is ordered

Two different things sit on a directory page:

The featured block, at the top. Up to three positions per list. Each one is paid for, by the month, and labelled. One institution appears once however many of those positions it holds. If fewer than three are sold, the block is smaller — we do not fill it with unpaid institutions to make it look complete. If none are sold, the block is not there at all.

The main list, below it. No position in it is sold on its own, but a paid listing does sort above an unpaid one. It is ordered in three bands:

Institutions with a paid listing. These are also the fullest pages on the site — the description, the pictures and the enquiry button are what the subscription pays for.
Institutions that have claimed their free listing. Claiming is free, and a claim never expires.
Listings we compiled ourselves from public sources, that nobody has claimed yet.

Within each band, the order is shuffled once a day. Everyone in a band gets time near the top. The order is the same for everyone for the whole day, which is why the page numbers work and why the back button behaves.

You can also sort the list yourself — by name, or however else the sort control on that page offers — and that overrides all of it, bands included.

Adverts on the page

We use Google Ad Manager. Adverts may be personalised using cookies, but only if you agreed to advertising cookies. If you have not, we do not load Google’s advertising at all — you see one of our own promotions in that space instead. You can change your choice at any time with Cookie choices at the foot of every page, and our Privacy Policy explains what each choice does.
We limit how much of a page can be advertising. Space is reserved for adverts before the page loads, so the page does not jump around while you read it, and pages with less content carry fewer adverts or none at all.
We do not put adverts on a page that a person has not reviewed. Every career profile is researched, written and signed off by a named person on our team before it is published, and that recorded sign-off is also what allows the page to carry advertising. Advertising is switched on per page, not site-wide.
We do not use pop-ups, adverts that cover the content, adverts that play sound by themselves, or adverts you have to wait to dismiss.

What we will not advertise

We turn down advertising that:

Claims or implies an accreditation or registration the advertiser does not hold
Promises admission, a qualification, a job or a salary
Offers credit, loans or “study now pay later” products to learners
Is aimed at getting a minor to hand over personal or financial information
Would breach the Code of Advertising Practice administered by the Advertising Regulatory Board

If you think we have got this wrong

Tell us. Email info@thinkeducation.co.za with the page and what you saw. If it is an advert and you are not satisfied with our answer, you can take it to the Advertising Regulatory Board.