Whole industries cannot advertise. They still need customers.

Not because they are doing anything wrong. Because the ad platforms refuse the category outright, or a regulator restricts what may be said and to whom, or both at once. A licensed dispensary, a bail bondsman, a firearms retailer and a registered investment adviser have nothing in common except that the two channels every other business starts with are closed to them.

So they spend anyway — on channels never built for them, with agencies whose answer to a prohibited category is to do the prohibited thing more carefully. Nobody sells them the thing they actually need, which is a map of where they are still allowed to go.

Ichnos is that map. It learns an industry’s own language, follows it to the rooms where that language is spoken, and then does the part nobody bothers with: it reads each destination’s own words on whether it accepts anything from outside, and quotes the sentence.

Survey progress

39 of 100 industries mapped deeply enough to sell · 61 still short

The access mapped so far is worth an estimated $2.4M–$18.8M a year, of which $2.3M–$17.7M can simply be bought.Estimated. We do not hold rate cards for these destinations and do not claim to — the figures are banded from published trade-media norms and each route's own kind of access and authority. They are deliberately conservative, and a buyer who thinks the bands are wrong can substitute their own; the comparison still holds.

An industry reaches publishable depth at 18 confirmed open routes — enough that a buyer has a channel strategy rather than a direction. Below that it is not for sale, and the page says so. This is the survey being built in the open; the figures move several times a day.

The Lockout Index

Which categories are shut out most completely — and which still have the most left. Scored on how severely a category is blocked, whether it carries more than one blocker at once, and how many of the doors we actually opened turned out to be shut.

Most shut out

Most left to work with

Scored on three observable things: how severely the category is blocked, whether it carries more than one blocker at once, and the share of places we mapped that publish nothing for outsiders. Industries where fewer than 40 places have actually been read are excluded: ranking those would rank our own coverage rather than their situation.

Find your industry

Three figures, for the one category you care about: how many places we have found where your kind of business is reachable, how many of those have told us in their own words that an outsider may take part, and how many of those you can simply buy.

Industry100 surveyed

Weight loss and GLP-1 telehealth

Weight-loss claims are restricted on the platforms and prescription products carry promotional obligations, which closes the funnel from both directions.

Map available

Places found: Publications, associations, forums and directories where your industry’s own language is actually spoken.
Confirmed open: These say in their own words that an outsider may take part. We quote the sentence, so you can judge it yourself rather than take ours.
You can simply buy: Advertising, sponsored placement or event presence — a budget and a decision, not an application.

Ways in

18join as a member

11buy advertising

10place sponsored content

8sponsor or exhibit

8contribute an article

3list your business

1send a press release

45 of 18 toward a publishable map

$2,997one-off · 45 confirmed-open places, each with the sentence that says soAccess worth an estimated $42K–$336K a year, purchasable

Buy the weight loss and glp-1 telehealth map

Start with twelve, free

Pick your industry and we will send twelve places that will still take you — real names, real links, and what each one lets an outsider do. No card, no account. It costs an email because the list is worth something and we would rather know who has it.

Twelve real destinations for your industry, with what each one lets an outsider do. No account, no card. The full map adds the rest — and the quoted sentence from each site saying what they accept.

Your industryEmail

Also email me when new places are found for my industry. Roughly monthly, and nothing else — no list, no partners.

We will not add you to anything you did not ask for, and we never sell or share an address.

Or buy the map, or ask for one

Maps are sold per industry, once, at $497 to $2,997 depending on how deep the survey has got. If your industry is not on the list, say so — a request moves it up the queue faster than anything else, because it is demand telling us what to build rather than us guessing.

Tell us your industry and we will send what the survey holds for it, what it costs, and what it does not cover.

Your industry

NameEmail

Company optionalAnything we should knowoptional

Goes straight to David. No list, no autoresponder — and we never contact anyone who did not write to us first.

How it works

Three stages. Each is measured separately, so we always know which one is leaking — and the one that is leaking is the one that gets worked on.

Stage one

Learn the language

The vocabulary an industry uses among itself — its regulators, licences, statutes, trade bodies and technical terms. Say them correctly and you are inside the trade; say them wrong and you are visibly selling something.

Stage two

Find where it is spoken

The publications, associations, forums and newsletters where that vocabulary actually appears. Not where an audience might plausibly be — where its language demonstrably is.

Stage three

Check the way in

Whether each destination accepts anything from outside, read from its own advertising or submissions page and quoted verbatim. This is the step that turns a list of places into something you can act on.

The ways in are rarely what people expect. Almost no trade publication says “write for us” — what they publish is an advertising page, a press-release wire, a business directory, an events prospectus, a membership. For an industry that cannot buy ads on the major platforms those are not lesser options. They are the channel, and a site that sells advertising has already decided that outsiders may reach its audience.

Locked Out

Every article about advertising is written for somebody the platforms will take money from. This one is not. A journal about the restrictions themselves — what they say, what happens when businesses try to get around them, and where these industries can still be reached.

Read Locked Out →

What it will not do

A product sold to people who cannot advertise, which itself worked by spamming, would be ridiculous. The restraint is the argument.

It never posts anythingIt maps and it verifies. What gets sent, and whether anything is sent at all, is always a person’s decision.
It never calls a route open on its own authorityThe most an automated check can conclude is that a destination publishes a way in. A human decides whether to use it.
It does not sell contact detailsAnd it never will. A route is a place, not a person — there is no list of anybody here to buy.
It shows counts, never routesThe destinations are the asset. A preview is a sample somebody can extrapolate from, which is why there isn’t one.

Who we map for

Industries that are lawful, licensed where a licence exists, and restricted by platform policy or advertising regulation — rather than by a record of enforcement for deception.

Every term in that sentence is a fact you can check, which is the point: we do not decide whose lockout was deserved. That is the judgement the platforms already made, and disagreeing with it is the reason this exists.

Not served

Adult services
Unlicensed pharmaceutical or controlled-substance supply
Any business operating without a licence its category requires