RuntimeWire bans third-party trackers and ad networks from every reader surface
Direct sponsors may buy clearly labeled space, but outside ad-tech companies will not get RuntimeWire's readers as part of the deal.
By Ryan Merket · Published
Why it matters
RuntimeWire is separating advertising from surveillance: direct sponsors can fund the publication, while reader identities and browsing histories stay out of outside ad systems.
Ryan Merket (@ryanmerket), founder of RuntimeWire, is making a permanent rule for the publication: no third-party trackers, behavioral ad networks, cross-site retargeting pixels or fingerprinting systems will run on RuntimeWire's reader surfaces.
The policy takes effect August 28th, 2026. It covers the website and RuntimeWire's owned reader products. RuntimeWire will not add outside advertising scripts that follow readers across the web, auction their identities through programmatic exchanges or hand browsing activity to data brokers in exchange for higher ad prices.
The commitment is permanent. A future revenue target, traffic milestone or investor conversation will not change it.
The rule
RuntimeWire's policy prohibits third-party code used to build behavioral profiles, retarget readers elsewhere, enrich advertising identities or transmit reading histories into an outside ad system.
That includes tracking pixels, third-party analytics designed around persistent user identifiers, browser fingerprinting, cross-site advertising cookies and programmatic ad exchanges. RuntimeWire will also honor browser privacy signals, including Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control, wherever those signals apply to a product interaction.
Articles and navigation on RuntimeWire already work with JavaScript disabled. Interactive features such as search, comments and newsletter signup require JavaScript, but reading the publication does not. The new rule turns that restrained technical posture into an explicit editorial and business commitment.
RuntimeWire will still operate the basic infrastructure required to deliver a website and authenticated products. Web requests reach servers. Signed-in features need account information. Security systems need enough data to detect abuse. Products that pay publishers for sponsored impressions need to count those impressions and clicks.
Those operational events will remain inside RuntimeWire's first-party systems. They will not become behavioral profiles sold, shared or synchronized with outside ad networks.
Direct sponsorship without surveillance
The ban does not prohibit advertising. It defines what RuntimeWire is willing to trade for it.
RuntimeWire may carry direct sponsorships that are sold, reviewed and served by RuntimeWire. Sponsored placements must be clearly labeled, separated from editorial decisions and targeted to the context in which they appear rather than a dossier assembled about the person viewing them.
That distinction matters because RuntimeWire already has a commercial product to govern. On June 12th, the publication launched a sponsored news ticker and first-party bid market for developers using its VS Code extension. The extension rotates headlines alongside one labeled sponsored slot. Anonymous use requires no account information. Signed-in publisher accounts report sponsored impressions and clicks so RuntimeWire can attribute revenue and limit fraud.
The Visual Studio Marketplace listing states that the extension communicates with the configured RuntimeWire origin and does not read code, prompts, completions or chat content. RuntimeWire will keep that direct model while refusing to bolt an outside surveillance stack onto it.
A sponsor can buy a placement. A sponsor cannot buy a reader's browsing history from RuntimeWire.
A position formed inside ad tech
Merket's position comes from experience building advertising products rather than from distance from the business. Before founding RuntimeWire, he held product roles at Facebook, InMobi and Reddit. Merket joined Reddit's product organization in August 2014 and led ads products during his tenure.
Merket says he was the sole product manager working on Reddit Ads in 2014 and defended the browser's Do Not Track setting as the user's decision. The advertising industry largely spent the following decade replacing that simple signal with consent interfaces, policy exceptions and new identifiers.
RuntimeWire is choosing the simpler rule. A reader who asks not to be tracked should not need to understand a vendor list, inspect dozens of cookie categories or trust that an opt-out will propagate through a chain of companies they have never heard of.
Privacy cannot depend on whether a reader finds the right setting. RuntimeWire will remove the machinery that makes the setting necessary.
What readers should expect
RuntimeWire will continue to publish free technology reporting, build reader products and sell direct sponsorships. Revenue will come from products and commercial relationships RuntimeWire can explain plainly.
The policy also sets a constraint on future product development. New analytics, advertising and growth tools must work without sending reader behavior into third-party tracking systems. If a vendor requires surveillance as the price of using its software, RuntimeWire will use something else or build the required function directly.
Media businesses often describe tracking as an unavoidable cost of funding journalism. It is a business choice. RuntimeWire is making a different one.
Readers came for reporting about founders, products and capital. Their attention does not give RuntimeWire permission to follow them home.