Machine Attention and verified sponsor delivery

Verified Machine Exposure (VME) means a centrally accepted event recording that the URSY runtime emitted a specific paid sponsor placement in a qualifying machine response. It does not prove reading, understanding, recommendation, citation, a human view, a click or a sale.

One request, one measurement path

The shared runtime classifies the request, evaluates the placement policy, selects the configured campaign, injects its separate disclosure, checks that the returned representation contains that fragment, and atomically writes counters with a durable local candidate. Only URSY.AD acceptance becomes public VME. Origin-generated sponsor representations and queued candidates are shown separately; origin generation does not establish that a client received a body.

Private operations remain private

This measurement covers the published public discovery paths only. Login, account management, OAuth, private API and MCP operations, memberships, photo libraries, media, shares and downloads are excluded before response inspection. Public discovery documents may carry a separate paid disclosure. Sponsorship never changes identity, permissions, private results or service access.

Qualifying responses and exclusions

Only a body-bearing 2xx response to a classified external machine request, with an active configured campaign and confirmed emission, can create a candidate. Humans, unknown machine-like requests, internal signed calls, administration, metrics/evidence calls, HEAD, OPTIONS, 304, 4xx, 5xx, missing sponsors and failed emission do not create production VME. Tests have a separate environment and non-billable campaign.

Cache and classification limits

Origin-sponsored responses request no-store. A cache hit that bypasses this runtime has no application emission proof and is excluded from VME. StackCDN can forward HEAD as origin GET. Ordinary production GET responses are therefore excluded as cached_without_edge_proof until authenticated edge method and body-delivery proof is available. Signed HEAD tests recover the original method and are excluded. Edge verification is not enabled here. Family labels are based on self-identifying User-Agent text; they are claims, not authenticated provider identities.

Central verification and delivery

UUIDv7 event IDs survive retries. A server worker sends signed batches separately from completed minute buckets. Minute identities and revisions prevent retry duplication. Campaign, creative, placement, ruleset and sponsor-fragment hash are recorded. Pending candidates remain queued during collector outages. Public VME is null when central verification is unavailable; local candidates never substitute for it.

Privacy and retention

No IP addresses, prompts, request or response bodies, MCP arguments, cookies, email addresses, authentication tokens, arbitrary query text or raw User-Agent strings enter this measurement store. It retains normalized categories, bounded route groups, aggregate counters and sponsor-only emission evidence. Delivered outbox rows are retained seven days; minute counters thirty days; daily counters at least twelve months. Unresolved evidence is retained for reconciliation.

History and methodology version

Methodology 1.0.1 with conservative estate delivery-proof policy; shared core 1.0.0; estate adapter 1.1.0-rc.1; all reporting periods use UTC. These measurements begin at the installation timestamp shown below. Existing historical request and citation ledgers retain their original meanings and are never relabelled VME. Changes to metric rules require a documented version. Human advertising metrics remain separate.

Machine declaration · Live data · Versioned contracts