A comparison desk from Ichnos

Locked Out: Agencies

Our other journal, Locked Out, writes one industry an issue for the people inside it. This one is for you — the firm holding four or six of those industries at once, with a retainer running on each.

Every issue compares two categories. Not because comparison is a format, but because the divergence is the finding: two industries can be shut to almost the same degree and the doors that remain point in opposite directions. That is invisible if you read either one alone, and it is precisely what breaks a plan when a team carries the playbook that worked for one across to the other.

Every figure comes from the live Ichnos map: 70,284 places examined across 408 restricted industries, 4,265 confirmed as publishing a way in, updated several times a day.

Recent

Thermal desorption soil remediation can buy commercial placement, but infectious substance packaging must join the room first.

While both industrial soil remediation and certified hazmat packaging face severe platform restrictions, their surviving commercial routes demand fundamentally incompatible planning rhythms and procurement strategies.

23 September 2026

Industrial lead shielding and secondary pharmaceutical wholesale require entirely different media sequencing.

While both sectors face near-total platform closure, secondary pharmaceutical distribution offers immediate commercial inventory whereas radiation shielding relies almost entirely on institutional vetting and editorial relationships.

16 September 2026

Hazmat certified packaging and commercial chemical tank washing look identical on the surface until you try to buy media.

While both sectors show a ninety-one per cent barrier rate, one allows paid entry through certification while the other admits industry participants solely through membership.

9 September 2026

What this will and will not be

A pair an issue, never a round-upTwo categories compared properly beats twelve listed. When no two are far enough apart to be worth reading, we publish nothing that week.
Figures, not adjectivesEvery claim comes from the survey with the count and the date attached, and every destination in it carries the sentence we read it from.
No workaroundsThe advice to open a second ad account is everywhere and it is what ends clients. We will keep saying so.
Written for the firm, not the platformFor the strategist who has to sequence four restricted categories this quarter and justify each channel to a client.