Your attention is being asked for.

Advertising is not neutral space. Someone is spending money, access, or influence to place a message in front of you because they want your attention directed toward their product, service, cause, organization, or next action.

Before giving an ad your attention: ask who paid for it, what they want you to do, whether you wanted or needed the message, and what else your attention could have been on instead.

Every sponsored message should make these answers obvious

Who paid?

The sponsor or paying organization should be named clearly.

What do they want?

Buy, click, subscribe, visit, donate, support, remember, or take another action.

Why am I seeing it?

Placement or targeting should be understandable without hidden profiling language.

Can I ignore it?

Sponsored content should be distinguishable and dismissible, not disguised as an answer or ranking.

Show Me Missouri rule

Advertising must never determine research findings, search ordering, popularity rankings, or the evidence shown to a user. Sponsorship is a separate relationship and should be labeled as such.

If paid messages are used, Show Me Missouri is being designed to identify the sponsor, the paid nature of the placement, the destination, and the sponsor's stated goal. The former Attention Dividend payment experiment is not active; advertiser intake, participant enrollment, checkout, and payouts remain disabled.

The purpose is awareness, not to tell a person whether to buy something. Seeing the influence attempt clearly gives the decision back to the viewer.

A simple pause

Did I come here looking for this—or did someone else place it in my path?

That one question can turn passive consumption back into an intentional choice.