FORT MILL, S.C. - s4story -- A new survey of where restricted industries can still legitimately reach an audience has found that the problem facing locked-out businesses is not rejection. It is silence.

KnightByrd Tech LLC read 65,043 industry websites - trade publications, professional associations, licensing bodies, conferences and directories - across 250 business categories that cannot advertise through mainstream channels. Of those, 5,590 publish a way for an outsider to take part: 8.6 percent.

Only 14 stated an outright refusal.

"Everyone assumes these doors are locked," said David A. Thompson, founder of KnightByrd Tech LLC. "They are not locked. They are unmarked. There is no advertising page, no submissions policy, nothing either way - so a business with no ad budget has no way to tell the difference without opening every page by hand."

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THE CATEGORIES ARE BROADER THAN EXPECTED

The deepest maps are not the categories people assume. Regenerative and stem cell clinics, fertility services, men's health clinics, medical tourism and tax resolution firms lead the survey.

Alongside them sit organisations nobody would call controversial. A food bank cannot target advertising by economic circumstance. A domestic violence shelter cannot advertise about abuse. A reentry programme cannot reach employers willing to hire people with criminal records - because anti-discrimination rules prohibit naming precisely the audience each one exists to serve.

"The protection works against the people it was written for," Thompson said. "Every one of these organisations still needs to reach somebody. The audience has not gone anywhere. It gathers somewhere the advertising platforms do not sell access to, and that is what the survey maps."

HOW IT IS MEASURED

Access is recorded only where a site states it in its own words, and that sentence is stored alongside the web address, so any claim can be checked rather than taken on trust.

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Of the 5,590 confirmed routes, 2,935 sell access outright through advertising, sponsored placement or event sponsorship. The remaining 2,655 accept outside participation without charging for it.

The survey records places, not people. It holds no contact database, sells no mailing lists and collects no personal data. The routes that cost nothing to pursue are free, with no account required. Paid maps are 497 dollars.

The survey is published at https://nexus.knightbyrd.com/ichnos, where counts are live and dated.

About KnightByrd Tech LLC

KnightByrd Tech LLC builds tools for businesses and organisations that established channels have shut out. Ichnos is its survey of restricted-category advertising access.