This is the promise the whole page rests on, so here is the mechanism rather than the pledge.
There is no price column on a partner. Nothing sorts by spend. There is no code path from the ads system into the partner system. The two share no table, no id, and no read, so “we would never do that” is not the safeguard; the absence of a way to do it is. The wall orders by rung and then by tenure. We do count impressions and clicks per partner per day, but those numbers are reporting only: they do not rank the wall, do not gate a rung, and do not move money. A partner who gets no clicks keeps their rung, because the rung is about the relationship.
Approval does not publish anything either. Approving an application mints a draft, and a draft is invisible until a person writes the two required sentences and places it by hand: what the group is, and what we actually do together. A partner with nothing to say about the relationship stays a draft. That is slower than a logo upload, and it is the only reason the wall is worth reading.
Placement is genuinely for sale, and it is a different thing entirely: flat daily rates, prepaid credits, its own labelled shelf beside the organic ranking, never inside it. Buy every slot on the site and you still will not appear on this page.