AUDIENCE STANDARD / CONTRACT 1.0
Count the reach.
Not the reader.
We need audience evidence before advertising makes sense. We do not need to build identity profiles to get it.
Clock not started.
The beacon is implemented but no production site token is configured. Zero months count toward the advertising gate.
- Provider
- Cloudflare Web Analytics
- Complete months
- 0
- Qualifying streak
- 0/3
- Threshold
- 25,000 visits
THE PRIMARY METRIC
Bot-excluded monthly visits
Cloudflare defines a visit as a page view reached from a different website or a direct link. One visit can include multiple page views.
This is a provider-defined visit, not a cookie-backed identity session and not a unique-person count.
01 / WHY THIS PROVIDER
Privacy first. Free to start. No DNS move.
Free, works without moving DNS or proxying the site, uses a lightweight beacon, and states that it does not collect or use visitors' personal data.
Cloudflare says its Web Analytics beacon does not collect or use visitors' personal data. It can run on a site that is not proxied through Cloudflare, which lets Fourth Down Labs keep Render and the current domain routing.
02 / WHAT WE DO NOT DO
No analytics cookie. No local identifier. No subscriber join.
03 / MONTH-CLOSE PROTOCOL
The streak advances only after the month is over.
- 01
Confirm the beacon on the canonical production hostname without logging or publishing the token as a secret claim; the site token is public instrumentation metadata.
- 02
Close each UTC month only after the provider marks the date range complete.
- 03
Apply Exclude Bots = Yes and record visits, page views, sampling status, extraction time, and a SHA-256 receipt for the exported evidence.
- 04
Commit the closed-month record to audience-rollups.json; never edit a closed value in place without a correction entry.
- 05
Advance the advertising reach gate only after three consecutive complete months each meet or exceed 25,000 visits.
04 / KNOWN LIMITATIONS
The counter is still a model of attention.
JavaScript blockers, disabled JavaScript, or visitors who leave before the beacon fires can create undercounting.
Bot exclusion is a provider classification, not proof that every automated request was removed.
Cloudflare retains unsampled beacon data for seven days, aggregates older data, and makes Web Analytics data available for the previous six months.
Cloudflare may apply adaptive sampling when querying aggregated data; any reported monthly total is a provider estimate when sampling is shown.
The visit definition can count a returning reader again after an external referral or direct entry and should not be relabeled as a unique person.