Independence and support policy

Zeytin.NET is not affiliated with any producer, brand, cooperative, association or commercial organisation. This page sets out what that independence means in practice, and which forms of support we accept on which terms.

We publish it because independence is not preserved by claiming it, but by writing down its limits.

The basic rule

Whoever pays does not decide what we write.

In practice: when an organisation gives us money or data, what it receives in return is visibility or attribution — not the content of an article, the conclusion of an analysis, or how a figure is interpreted.

What we do

We collect our own data. Price series are compiled from the open registration records of commodity exchanges; exchange rates come from the European Central Bank, European producer prices from the European Commission, world production from the International Olive Council, and the price index from Eurostat. All are open sources and the raw data can be downloaded.

We cite every figure. Inside the article, with its reference.

We say what we cannot measure. We have no retail price series, and we state that in every article where it matters. We do not fill gaps with estimates.

We leave the calculation reproducible. We describe the method and publish the raw data. Anyone reaching a different result can tell us.

What we do not do

• We do not rank products. No "best olive oil" lists.
• We do not sell reviews. No product is assessed favourably or unfavourably in exchange for payment.
• We do not fabricate ratings. Star ratings come only from real reader votes; with no votes, no rating schema is emitted.
• We do not place advertising on analysis pages. Sponsored content does not appear on pages carrying price and market analysis.
• We do not share work in advance. Neither sponsors nor partners see an analysis before publication.

Forms of support we accept

1. Data partnership

This is the form we value most, and it involves no money.

Cooperatives, producer associations, exchanges, universities and research institutions can supply us with data: harvest estimates, stock declarations, operating costs, retail price series, variety trials.

What we do in return is publish the data with its source and credit the institution. The institution supplying data does not determine the conclusion drawn from it — the figures produce their own conclusion.

Everything we currently cannot measure — shelf prices, stocks, production by province — could be opened up this way.

2. Institutional data access

The raw data always remains open and free to everyone. CSV downloads will not be closed off.

What can be offered to institutional users is not the data but ease of access: programmatic access, regular reports, custom extracts, technical support. What is sold is a service, not the data.

This does not affect content, because the same data is already public.

3. Sponsorship

Sponsorship is acceptable under these rules:

• Sponsored content is clearly labelled and its links carry `rel="sponsored"`.
• Sponsored content does not mix with the analysis series; it stands apart.
• No sponsor appears on price and market analysis pages.
• A sponsor sees no unpublished content and has no input into any article.
• The list of sponsors is kept open on this page.

4. Advertising

The test is not who the advertiser is but what runs in the reader's browser. Three conditions:

1. No code runs in the browser. The advert is fetched server-side and rendered as plain HTML. JavaScript, iframes and externally loaded scripts are not accepted.

2. The reader is not tracked. No cookies, no fingerprinting, no requests to third parties; advert images are served from our own domain so the visitor's IP never reaches the ad server.

3. The advert is clearly distinguishable. It is visibly labelled, its links carry `rel="sponsored"`, and it does not blend into editorial content.

Both automated networks and direct advertisers are acceptable if they meet these conditions. Server-to-server networks exist — our server fetches the advert and we render the page; the reader's browser never sees the ad network.

Any network that fails these conditions is not used. AdSense is one of them: it requires JavaScript in the browser, selects the advert by tracking the reader, and turns an 11 KB page into megabytes. The site is approved for AdSense; not using it is a deliberate choice.

An earlier version of this page described automated networks as "the most neutral form of revenue from an independence standpoint." We changed the test: neutrality is measured not by declining to choose the advertiser but by protecting the reader. Not knowing who the advertiser is is not neutrality but irresponsibility; if an advert for a brand selling adulterated olive oil appears on our page, "we did not choose it" is worth nothing to the reader.

Advertising is never shown on login and registration pages, in legal texts, or on price and market analysis pages.

What we do technically

Independence is measured not only in the revenue model but in the page itself. On this site:

• Not one line of JavaScript. Everything, calculators included, runs on the server; no code runs in your browser. (The one exception is the player on the radio page, for play/pause and volume.)
• No trackers, no ad code, no tracking cookies. No Google Analytics, Tag Manager, Meta pixel, Hotjar, Clarity, Matomo or Plausible.
• Visit counting happens on our own server. No IP is stored; a visitor is reduced to a one-way digest with a salt that changes daily. That digest is shared with no one.
• Measured values: the home page HTML is ~11 KB, the stylesheet ~17 KB, server response ~0.17 seconds.

These are measurements, not claims. View the page source and check.

Conflicts of interest

Where an article's subject directly concerns an organisation that supplies us with data or support, that is stated within the article.

We do not withhold a finding critical of an organisation because it supplies us with data. In such a case the choice is to publish the finding, even at the cost of losing the data.

Current position

As of the date this page was written:

• Sponsors: none
• Data partnerships: none
• Advertising: none · approved for AdSense, deliberately not used
• Commercial affiliations: none

This list is updated as it changes.

Contact

For data partnership, institutional access or sponsorship, write to us through our contact page.

If you have found an error, believe we have got a calculation wrong, or hold data we cannot measure — we would particularly like to hear from you.

Related pages: About · Copyright and content policy · Privacy policy · Market data

5. Direct reader support

Readers can support the site directly: kreosus.com/zeytinnet

Monthly or one-off, any amount. There is no need to register with us, give us an e-mail address or share any information; the link goes to Kreosus and everything stays there.

What do supporters get? Nothing — deliberately. There are no supporter-only articles, no early access, no downloadable files and no members' section. The site's only value is that its content is entirely open; the day we close part of it off, we break that.

Support does not influence content. Supporters have no say over what is written, how, or what it concludes. This is the same basic rule stated at the top of this page: whoever pays does not decide what we write.

Support goes to the server, the domain, paid data services and the time spent extracting data by hand. That last item is larger than it sounds — Marmara's 2019–2022 price history was produced by parsing forty monthly bulletins of the Gemlik Commodity Exchange one by one.

If you cannot support, there are other ways to help: share a page you found useful, tell us if you spot an error, subscribe to the feeds. Finding a wrong figure on this site is the most valuable thing you can give us.