The Form 1-E AD Files Dataset is a corpus of advertising and sales-literature submissions filed with the SEC under Rule 607 of Regulation E of the Securities Act of 1933. Each record is a single EDGAR submission of form type 1-E AD — one pre-use advertising package lodged by a small business investment company (SBIC) or a business development company (BDC) in connection with an exempt securities offering under Regulation E, identified by an 18-digit accession number and tied to a 095- offering file number. Every record bundles a structured metadata.json header with the original HTML advertising documents (tombstone ads, press releases, investor letters, broadcast scripts, brochure or web-page copy) exactly as they were accepted by EDGAR, preserved in their EDGAR SGML <DOCUMENT> wrappers. The dataset covers all Form 1-E AD filings submitted to EDGAR from 1 May 2016 to present, is distributed as monthly ZIP containers, and holds HTML and JSON file types.
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This dataset captures the full population of Form 1-E AD filings accepted by EDGAR since 1 May 2016. Form 1-E AD is the filing vehicle used to deposit advertising and sales literature with the Commission in connection with a securities offering conducted under Regulation E, codified at 17 CFR 230.601–610. Regulation E is the narrow exemption that lets SBICs licensed under the Small Business Investment Act of 1958 and BDCs as defined in Section 2(a)(48) of the Investment Company Act of 1940 sell up to $5 million of their own securities without Securities Act registration, using an abbreviated Form 1-E offering circular rather than a full Form S-1 or N-2 registration statement.
Because Regulation E issuers can market exempt offerings to retail investors without Section 5 review, Rule 607 provides a compensating prophylactic: any advertisement, article, broadcast script, or other written or televised communication distributed to more than ten persons in connection with the Regulation E offering must be filed with the Commission at least five business days before first use, giving staff an opportunity to examine it for materially false or misleading statements or material omissions. For each accession number the dataset includes a metadata.json file and every document from the original EDGAR submission other than image files; GRAPHIC exhibits and the aggregated complete-submission .txt file are cataloged with absolute URLs rather than physically redistributed. Records are delivered in monthly ZIP containers and the constituent files are HTML (the advertising documents themselves) and JSON (the per-record metadata header).
One record in the Form 1-E AD Files Dataset is a single EDGAR submission of form type 1-E AD — that is, one advertising or sales-literature package filed under Rule 607 of Regulation E, keyed on a single 18-digit accession number. A record is not a single paragraph of ad copy, a single graphic, or a single offering; it is the full filing as accepted by EDGAR, composed of a metadata.json header plus every document that belonged to the original submission other than image files. When the issuer lodges multiple pieces of sales literature in one accession (for example a cover letter, a tombstone ad, and a broadcast script), all of those documents belong to the same record and share the same metadata.
On disk, each record is a folder whose name is the accession number with dashes stripped (for example 000089710116002286 for accession 0000897101-16-002286). The folder sits inside a YYYY-MM/ directory that is produced by unpacking a monthly ZIP container. Inside the folder are exactly one metadata.json and one or more HTML document files saved under the original EDGAR filenames.
The act code 40 carried in the entities block ties each record to the Investment Company Act of 1940, consistent with the BDC/SBIC population eligible to rely on Regulation E.
The filed material is the literal advertisement or sales communication the issuer intends to publish — not an SEC-drafted disclosure form with numbered items. There is no Part I/Part II structure and no item schedule. The content is whatever the issuer prepared (tombstone ad, press release, investor letter, broadcast script, email blast, web-page text, brochure copy). The Commission's role is limited to receiving and reviewing; Rule 607 does not dictate section headings, tabular schedules, or signature blocks. What ties a record to the regulatory regime is typically a top-of-page legend of the form Filed Pursuant to Rule 607 / File No. 095-nnnnn, where the 095- prefix is the EDGAR-assigned series for Regulation E offering file numbers and matches the fileNo carried in the entities block.
Records are distributed in monthly ZIP archives organized by calendar year. Each ZIP expands to a YYYY-MM/ directory in which every accession submitted to EDGAR during that month appears as its own sub-folder. Inside an accession folder, a record consists of:
metadata.json — the structured header for the filinghcc160362_1e-ad.htm), each wrapped in an EDGAR SGML <DOCUMENT> … </DOCUMENT> block rather than bare HTMLThe file types present in the dataset are HTML (the advertising documents) and JSON (the per-record metadata header). GRAPHIC exhibits — the JPEG logos, photos, and inline images that Rule 607 ads frequently reference via <IMG SRC="...jpg"> tags — are intentionally stripped from the archive, as is the aggregated .txt "complete submission text file" that EDGAR builds by concatenating every document in the filing. Both remain fully cataloged inside metadata.json via direct URLs to the SEC's public archive, so a consumer can fetch them on demand without the ZIP carrying the binary payload.
metadata.json schemaThe metadata.json file is the authoritative structured representation of the filing. Its top-level keys are:
formType — always the literal string "1-E AD" for this dataset.accessionNo — canonical 18-digit EDGAR accession number in dashed form (e.g. 0000897101-16-002286).id — opaque 32-character hex identifier, unique per filing.filedAt — ISO-8601 timestamp of acceptance, including EDGAR's Eastern-time offset (e.g. 2016-05-03T12:47:17-04:00).description — short EDGAR-supplied description; frequently just "Form 1-E AD -" with little narrative content.linkToFilingDetails — absolute URL of the primary (sequence-1) document on www.sec.gov/Archives.linkToTxt — absolute URL of the complete SGML submission .txt bundle (not included in the ZIP).linkToHtml — absolute URL of EDGAR's filing-index HTML page for the accession.linkToXbrl — empty for Form 1-E AD.seriesAndClassesContractsInformation — empty array; Regulation E BDC/SBIC offerings do not report registered investment company series/class contract data here.dataFiles — empty array; no structured data files accompany 1-E AD submissions.documentFormatFiles — the enumerated list of submission documents (detailed below).entities — the filer identification block (detailed below).documentFormatFiles[]Each element describes one file that belonged to the original EDGAR submission, whether or not the ZIP physically contains it. The per-element fields are sequence (string), size (string, bytes), documentUrl (absolute URL), description, and type. A single-document 1-E AD submission yields a three-element array of the shape:
sequence: "1", type: "1-E AD" — the primary HTML advertising document; present inside the accession folder.sequence: "2", type: "GRAPHIC" — a JPEG graphic (logo, header image, signature scan) referenced by the HTML; absent from the ZIP, available at documentUrl.sequence: " ", type: " ", description: "Complete submission text file" — the concatenated SGML .txt that EDGAR generates for every acceptance; absent from the ZIP, available at documentUrl.When a filer submits multiple ads, letters, or scripts in the same accession, additional type: "1-E AD" entries appear with higher sequence numbers, each accompanied by a corresponding HTML file inside the folder. Any number of GRAPHIC entries may appear; none are archived in the ZIP.
entities[]The entities[] array carries one object per party to the filing — in practice the filer itself, whose role is annotated inline as " (Filer)" appended to companyName. Fields populated for 1-E AD records include:
companyName — legal name of the issuer with a (Filer) role suffix (e.g. "Hill Capital Corp (Filer)").cik — zero-padded 10-digit Central Index Key.type — duplicates the submission's form type ("1-E AD").stateOfIncorporation — two-letter state code of the issuer's domicile.act — Securities-act code under which the entity reports; "40" denotes the Investment Company Act of 1940, matching the BDC scope of Regulation E.fileNo — the Regulation E offering file number, formatted 095-nnnnn. The same fileNo recurs across every 1-E AD record tied to the same exempt offering, providing the canonical key for grouping related ads.filmNo — EDGAR's per-filing microfiche-style film number; unique to each accession even when the same issuer files repeatedly against the same fileNo.irsNo — employer identification number; may be zero-padded ("000000000") when the filer did not supply one.<DOCUMENT> wrapperEach HTML advertising file in the accession folder is not a bare browser-ready HTML document; it is the file exactly as it was lodged with EDGAR, which means it begins with the EDGAR SGML document header. The wrapper takes the form:
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<DOCUMENT>
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<TYPE>1-E AD
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<SEQUENCE>1
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<FILENAME>hcc160362_1e-ad.htm
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<DESCRIPTION>1-E AD
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<TEXT>
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<HTML> ... full HTML advertisement body ... </HTML>
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</TEXT>
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</DOCUMENT>
The five header tags (<TYPE>, <SEQUENCE>, <FILENAME>, <DESCRIPTION>, <TEXT>) are terminated by newlines rather than closing tags in classic EDGAR fashion; the <TEXT> block contains the renderable HTML body. A programmatic consumer that wants to render the advertisement as HTML must strip the outer <DOCUMENT> header (through and including the <TEXT> line) and the trailing </TEXT></DOCUMENT> footer before handing the payload to an HTML parser. The <TYPE> line inside the wrapper mirrors the type field in documentFormatFiles[], and the <FILENAME> line matches the on-disk filename, which in turn matches the path component of the corresponding documentUrl.
Because Rule 607 imposes no template on the advertising material, the body of the HTML document inside <TEXT> varies widely, but in practice filings cluster into a small number of recognizable formats:
New Issue — <Month Year> banner; a share-count line (5,000 Shares); an issuer logo (delivered as a separate GRAPHIC JPEG and referenced by <IMG SRC>); the security designation (COMMON STOCK); the offering price (Price $1,000 per Share); and a short paragraph pointing the reader to the Form 1-E Offering Circular. File sizes are small (single-digit kilobytes).Regardless of format, Rule 607 compliance cues appear on the face of the document: a top-of-page legend Filed Pursuant to Rule 607 / File No. 095-nnnnn, issuer identification matching entities[].companyName / entities[].cik, and a cross-reference to the underlying Form 1-E Offering Circular or its amendments (for example Form 1-E/A). The fileNo printed in the ad mirrors the fileNo in metadata.json, providing a redundant linkage between the advertising material and the exempt offering it promotes.
A record in this dataset bundles:
metadata.json header with form metadata, filing timestamps, EDGAR URLs, the full documentFormatFiles[] inventory, and the entities[] filer block;<DOCUMENT> wrapper, with filenames unchanged from what the issuer submitted;www.sec.gov/Archives.Two classes of content that exist in the original EDGAR submission are not carried in the ZIP:
documentFormatFiles[] with type: "GRAPHIC" but are not physically present inside the accession folder. HTML <IMG SRC> tags will consequently fail to resolve when the file is opened locally. The original images remain available at the cataloged documentUrl..txt that EDGAR builds by concatenating the <SEC-HEADER>, every <DOCUMENT>, and the closing envelope into one document is cataloged via linkToTxt and as an entry in documentFormatFiles[] with blank sequence and type and description: "Complete submission text file", but the bytes themselves are not redistributed.Beyond the filing itself, the dataset does not include the related Form 1-E offering circular, any Form 1-E/A amendments, subscription agreements, or blue-sky filings. Those are separate EDGAR submissions under different form types and, where relevant, are covered by separate datasets.
The dataset starts on 1 May 2016, well after EDGAR's general migration away from ASCII-only submissions, so every record in scope is HTML wrapped in the EDGAR SGML document envelope; the ASCII/text era and the early HTML-only era do not apply. The core metadata.json schema, the three-element documentFormatFiles[] pattern for single-document ads (primary HTML + GRAPHIC + complete-submission TXT), and the SGML <DOCUMENT> wrapper around the HTML body have remained stable throughout the covered period. Rule 607's substantive requirements — five-business-day advance filing, the more-than-ten-persons distribution threshold, and the materially-misleading-or-omissions review standard — have not changed since the dataset began, so the content demands placed on issuers are constant across records. What has drifted, slowly, is stylistic: later filings tend to use richer HTML and inline CSS, more elaborate multi-image press-release layouts, and larger advertising packages, while the classical single-page tombstone format remains but is proportionally rarer. Because Regulation E itself is narrowly used — it applies only to SBICs and BDCs up to a $5 million ceiling, and the broader Regulation A/A+ regime handles most exempt offerings above that threshold — the 1-E AD population is small and tends to concentrate in a handful of active filers and their offering file numbers.
fileNo field (095-nnnnn) is the correct key for grouping all 1-E AD records tied to the same Regulation E offering, even when they are filed days or months apart. accessionNo identifies the individual advertising submission, and filmNo is unique per accession and is the right identifier for de-duplicating filings.<HTML> block, naive HTML parsers may misrender the first several lines of each document file; extracting the payload between <TEXT> and </TEXT> is the safe preprocessing step.GRAPHIC files that must be fetched from documentUrl.description in metadata.json is frequently uninformative (often just "Form 1-E AD -"); the authoritative description of what the advertisement actually is comes from reading the <TEXT> body, not the metadata.metadata.json and appear as sibling HTML files in the same folder; they should not be treated as separate records even though they may represent distinct communications (cover letter plus tombstone plus broadcast script, for example).act: "40" marker in the entities block reflects the filer's registration status under the Investment Company Act rather than the Securities Act basis for the offering; the Regulation E exemption itself is under the 1933 Act, and the fileNo prefix 095- is the EDGAR-assigned series for Regulation E offering files.1-E AD are included. Cross-references from an advertisement to its Offering Circular (by file number) are the normal mechanism for linking a record to the exempt offering it promotes.Each Form 1-E AD record is filed by an issuer conducting a securities offering in reliance on Regulation E of the Securities Act of 1933, or by a representative acting on that issuer's behalf. The filer is the issuer itself, not a broker-dealer, placement agent, advertising vendor, or investor. The (Filer) tag on entities[].companyName, the issuer's cik, a 095- Regulation E fileNo, and act: "40" all identify the issuer as the reporting party.
Regulation E is open to only two classes of issuer, so only two classes ever produce Form 1-E AD filings:
act: "40" code in each record reflects this status.All other issuers are out of scope: operating companies, REITs, SPACs, crowdfunding issuers, Regulation A Tier 1/Tier 2 issuers, Regulation D issuers, and foreign private issuers do not generate Form 1-E AD records. Comparable-size issuers typically use Regulation A (Form 1-A and related sales-literature filings) or Regulation D (Form D) instead.
The legal trigger is Rule 607 of Regulation E. Rule 607 requires an issuer relying on Regulation E to file copies of any advertisement, article, letter, investment letter, notice, circular, radio or television broadcast script, or similar communication that will be distributed to more than ten persons in connection with the offering. The ten-person threshold is dispositive: communications sent to ten or fewer persons are outside the rule; anything prepared or authorized by the issuer and aimed at eleven or more recipients is in scope, regardless of medium (print, broadcast, email, web).
Typical material captured by Rule 607 includes:
Rule 607 is an advance-filing regime. The material must be filed at least five business days before its first use. The clock runs from intended first public use, not from internal drafting or approval. Business days exclude weekends and federal holidays when EDGAR is closed. The window gives SEC staff a pre-publication opportunity to review the material for materially false or misleading statements or omissions; staff does not approve the ad or pass on the merits of the offering. Substantive revisions generally trigger a new advance filing before the revised version is used.
Because the regime is prospective, filedAt should be read as acceptance before intended use, not as a post-publication lodgment. Materials used before filing are a compliance defect, not a valid filing pattern.
Each Form 1-E AD is tethered to a live Regulation E offering by the same issuer. The offering itself is subject to the Rule 605 ceiling, which caps aggregate sales in reliance on Regulation E at $5,000,000 in any twelve-month period (net of sales under other Section 3(b) exemptions). The offering's prospectus-equivalent is a separately filed Form 1-E Offering Circular (and any Form 1-E/A amendments) under the same 095- file number. The 1-E AD record therefore contains no standalone offering disclosure; it is the downstream promotional artifact attached to a pre-existing offering file.
The filing obligation runs to the issuer. The submission is made either by the issuer directly or by an authorized agent (counsel, filing service) using the issuer's CIK. Broker-dealers, placement agents, and advertising firms that distribute or prepare the material are not co-filers; when a broker-dealer circulates issuer-prepared literature, the issuer remains the Rule 607 filer of record.
Rule 607 does not use an "/A" amendment convention. Every advance filing, whether original, revised, or additional, is submitted as 1-E AD against the same 095- file number and receives its own accession number. Group campaign filings by fileNo; identify the individual submission by accessionNo.
entities[].024- file numbers, not Form 1-E AD. A 095- file number is the clearest signal of Regulation E.095- file number and are outside this dataset.On EDGAR, the 1-E AD form type has long accommodated Rule 607 advance filings. This dataset's coverage begins 1 May 2016; every record within scope is a contemporaneous Rule 607 advance filing by an SBIC or Section 2(a)(48) BDC, submitted at least five business days before the intended first use of the advertising material it contains.
Form 1-E AD is a narrow pre-use advertising submission tied to Regulation E offerings by SBICs and BDCs. The closest comparison targets fall into three groups: other Regulation E filings, other exempt-offering advertising regimes (Reg A, Reg CF, Reg D), and registered-offering advertising and sales-literature filings (Rule 482, Form 497, Rule 433 FWPs).
Form 1-E is the substantive offering document: issuer identity, offering terms, use of proceeds, financial statements, and the Schedule A disclosures required to qualify a Reg E offering.
Form 1-E AD is the ancillary promotional wrapper for that offering: advertising, broadcast scripts, and written sales communications reviewed under Rule 607 for materially misleading statements. Form 1-E tells you an offering exists; Form 1-E AD tells you how it is marketed. The two are complementary and should be joined on issuer CIK, not substituted.
Form 253(g)(2) is a Regulation A post-qualification supplement filed under Rule 253(g) to update pricing or add material information to a qualified offering circular.
Form 1-E AD differs in exemption (Reg E vs Reg A), in function (separate promotional material, not an amendment to the offering document), and in timing (pre-use, five days before distribution, vs triggered by post-qualification changes).
Form 1-A is the Regulation A offering statement; Form 1-A AD covers Rule 255 "test-the-waters" soliciting materials used before or after Reg A qualification.
Form 1-E AD is the functional cousin under a different exemption. Differences: regime (Reg E vs Reg A), eligible issuers (SBICs/BDCs only vs a broader pool of Reg A issuers), and trigger (Rule 607's mandatory five-day pre-filing vs Rule 255's legend-and-filing obligations for written TTW materials). Reg A advertising is actively used; Form 1-E AD is rare because Regulation E itself is nearly dormant.
These are Tier 2 Reg A periodic and event-driven reports (Form 1-K annual, Form 1-SA semiannual, Form 1-U current event) — issuer-reporting documents with financials and material-event disclosure.
Form 1-E AD is pre-use advertising review, not periodic reporting. Regulation E has no parallel ongoing-reporting cadence. Not substitutable at any level.
Rule 482 governs advertisements by registered investment companies (mutual funds, ETFs) that contain performance data beyond Rule 134 limits. Such ads are Section 10(b) prospectuses and are typically filed on EDGAR via the Form 497 family.
Differences from Form 1-E AD: registered rather than exempt offerings; filer population of registered funds rather than SBIC/BDC Reg E issuers; filing vehicle is Form 497 rather than 1-E AD; post-use filing posture rather than Rule 607's pre-use five-day window; and enforcement focus on standardized-return and legend rules rather than Rule 607's misleading-statement review.
Form 497 covers prospectus filings by registered investment companies under Rule 497, including definitive prospectuses, supplements, and, under Rule 497(e), sales literature deemed to be a prospectus.
Form 1-E AD differs in regime (exempt Reg E vs registered fund offerings under the 1933 and 1940 Acts), filer population (SBICs/BDCs vs registered funds), and timing (pre-use under Rule 607 vs definitive or post-use under Rule 497). Content may look similar but the legal frameworks do not overlap.
FWPs are written offers for registered securities that do not meet statutory prospectus requirements, filed alongside a 424(b) prospectus for Section 5 registered offerings.
Form 1-E AD occupies the analogous promotional-materials role but under Regulation E and Rule 607, not Section 5 and Rule 433. Free Writing Prospectuses are filed on or near first use; Form 1-E AD must be filed at least five days before use. FWPs attach to a base registration prospectus; Form 1-E AD attaches to a Schedule A offering circular.
Form D is a short notice of sales under Rules 504 and 506, filed within 15 days after first sale. It carries no advertising content.
Overlap with Form 1-E AD is limited to both being exempt-offering artifacts. Form D is a post-sale structured notice under Reg D (with its own advertising rules, notably Rule 506(c) general solicitation); Form 1-E AD is pre-use promotional copy under Reg E. Not substitutable.
Form C and the C-AR/CF-AR series cover offerings and annual reporting under Regulation Crowdfunding (Section 4(a)(6)). Reg CF advertising is governed by Rule 204, which restricts issuers to tombstone-style notices pointing to the intermediary platform and generates no free-standing EDGAR advertising filing.
Form 1-E AD differs in exemption (Reg E vs Reg CF), filer population (SBICs/BDCs vs any eligible Reg CF issuer), and document character (substantive pre-use advertising and scripts vs limited notices that largely live off-EDGAR).
Form 1-E AD is defined by four features taken together: (1) advertising and sales-literature content, not an offering document or periodic report; (2) Regulation E exclusively, limiting eligible filers to SBICs and BDCs; (3) pre-use submission under Rule 607 with a five-day staff-review window, unlike the post-use or contemporaneous posture of Rules 482, 433, and 497; and (4) an exempt-offering context, separating it from the entire FWP/424/497 registered-offering ecosystem even where marketing copy looks similar.
The dataset is small and slow-growing because Regulation E is seldom used today; most small-offering marketing activity has migrated to Reg A (Form 1-A AD / Rule 255) or Reg CF. Form 1-E AD complements rather than substitutes for those corpora, and nothing else substitutes for it when the subject is promotional content tied to a Regulation E offering.
The audience for Form 1-E AD records is narrow but well-defined, and most users work with three elements of every record: the metadata.json block (filedAt, fileNo, accessionNo, entities, formType, linkToFilingDetails), the HTML advertisement body (headlines, performance claims, risk legends, scripts, cover letters), and the EDGAR submission URL.
In-house counsel at SBICs and BDCs, and outside disclosure counsel advising them, use the dataset as a precedent library when clearing new sales literature under Rule 607. They pull prior ad bodies to benchmark performance summaries, risk disclaimers, fee descriptions, and "not a prospectus" legends, then use filedAt to confirm the five-day pre-use window, entities to identify the filer, and fileNo to tie the advertisement to the underlying offering. Output: clearance memos, redlines, and internal guidance.
Staff in Corporation Finance and Investment Management use the filings to run Rule 607 pre-use reviews for materially misleading statements or omissions. The structured dataset supports longitudinal supervision: tracking repeat filers, mapping broadcast versus written circulars, and identifying patterns in performance claims across the 1-E AD population. They read the ad text, the tie to the Reg E offering, and the filedAt timestamp.
Enforcement attorneys and plaintiffs' lawyers pursuing antifraud claims assemble the documentary record of what an issuer said before and during an exempt offering. They extract ad copy as exhibits, compare successive filings under the same entities identifier for shifting performance claims, and cite filedAt and accessionNo to fix when a statement entered circulation. The workflow feeds complaints, Wells submissions, and materiality expert reports.
Researchers studying exempt-offering advertising, small-issuer capital formation, or pre-use versus post-use review regimes treat the corpus as a primary source. They use formType, filedAt, and entities for panel construction, and the HTML bodies for content analysis, readability scoring, and comparison against Regulation A and Regulation D marketing materials.
Reporters covering small-business capital formation and BDC fundraising use the dataset to surface advertisements otherwise buried in EDGAR. They read the ad body for newsworthy claims, use linkToFilingDetails to point readers to the source, and join on entities and fileNo to connect a pitch to its offering.
Investor-protection groups citing the effectiveness or obsolescence of the Reg E advertising regime pull concrete examples from HTML ad bodies, use filedAt counts to show usage trends, and reference specific accessionNo records in comment letters on exempt-offering, BDC, or fund-advertising rulemaking.
Data engineering teams ingest the 1-E AD corpus alongside Regulation A circulars, Form D notices, and Rule 482 fund advertising. They parse metadata.json into issuer tables keyed on CIK, extract text features from the HTML bodies, and join on fileNo to link ads to offerings, feeding issuer-monitoring and claim-extraction pipelines.
Compliance staff supervising public communications at broker-dealers selling SBIC or BDC interests cross-reference the filed ad body against what registered representatives are circulating, confirm the issuer's filing covers the piece in use, and check filedAt to verify pre-distribution timing. The work supports supervisory reviews and communications-rule filings.
Issuer-side marketing and IR teams preparing Rule 607 materials use the dataset as a precedent bank, reading peer ad bodies for headline structure, comparative performance language, and risk legends, and filtering on entities to focus on comparable issuers.
Across all users, a handful of fields do most of the work: the HTML advertisement body, filedAt and accessionNo for timing, entities and fileNo for issuer-to-offering links, and linkToFilingDetails as the anchor back to EDGAR.
The Form 1-E AD Files Dataset supports a narrow set of concrete workflows centered on pre-use advertising review under Rule 607. The records combine a structured metadata.json header with the HTML advertisement body wrapped in an EDGAR SGML <DOCUMENT> envelope, which together enable the following uses.
In-house and outside counsel advising SBICs and BDCs extract the HTML body from each record (stripping the <DOCUMENT>/<TEXT> wrapper) to benchmark headline wording, "not a prospectus" legends, performance summaries, and risk disclaimers against previously filed peer material. Records are grouped by entities[].cik and entities[].fileNo (095-nnnnn) to isolate ads tied to the same Regulation E offering or the same issuer, and the resulting corpus drives clearance memos and redlines on new sales literature before the five-day pre-use window starts.
Broker-dealer communications compliance and issuer-side IR teams use filedAt (ISO-8601, Eastern-time offset) paired with the intended first-use date of a piece to confirm the Rule 607 five-business-day cushion. The accessionNo and linkToFilingDetails anchor each check to a specific EDGAR submission, and entities[].companyName plus the fileNo legend printed in the HTML body confirm that the filing on record actually covers the piece the registered representatives are circulating.
Enforcement and plaintiffs' counsel collect every 1-E AD submission sharing a common fileNo to reconstruct what an issuer told prospective investors over the life of an exempt offering. Each HTML body becomes a dated exhibit keyed on accessionNo and filedAt; successive filings under the same entities[].cik are diffed to surface shifting performance claims, altered risk legends, or removed disclaimers, and linkToFilingDetails supplies the authoritative source citation for complaints, Wells submissions, and materiality reports.
SEC review staff and academic researchers build longitudinal panels from metadata.json alone: counts by entities[].cik, stateOfIncorporation, and fileNo, cadence from filedAt, and literature-type mix inferred from the number and descriptions of documentFormatFiles[] entries (tombstone vs. press release vs. investor letter vs. broadcast script when multiple type: "1-E AD" documents share one accession). This feeds supervisory targeting of repeat filers and empirical studies of exempt-offering marketing intensity.
Quant and data teams parse the HTML body for headlines, numeric performance claims, fee language, and mandated legends, then join on entities[].cik with Regulation A (Form 1-A AD / Rule 255), Form D, and Rule 482 fund-advertising corpora. The fileNo links each ad back to its underlying Regulation E offering circular, while the act: "40" marker in the entities block tags the filer as an Investment Company Act registrant, enabling clean segmentation of BDC/SBIC marketing language from adjacent exempt-offering and registered-fund advertising.
Because GRAPHIC exhibits and the aggregated .txt complete-submission file are catalogued in documentFormatFiles[] and linkToTxt but omitted from the ZIP, users rendering tombstone ads with logos, press-release mastheads, or scanned brochures resolve <IMG SRC> references through the documentUrl values in documentFormatFiles[]. This supports faithful visual reproduction of ads as exhibits and fills in substantive content for image-heavy filings whose on-disk HTML carries little extractable text.
The Form 1-E AD Files Dataset is available through three access paths: a JSON index describing dataset metadata and available containers, a single archive covering the entire dataset, and per-month container ZIPs for targeted downloads. The full archive and per-container downloads require authentication via the token query parameter; the JSON index is public.
Dataset Index JSON API: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-1e-ad-files.json
Returns dataset-level metadata (name, description, updatedAt, earliestSampleDate, totalRecords, totalSize, formTypes, containerFormat, fileTypes) along with a containers array listing every monthly ZIP with its key, size, records, updatedAt, and downloadUrl. Iterate the containers array to discover available months, and compare the updatedAt timestamps between runs to determine which containers changed in the latest refresh and should be re-downloaded. This endpoint does not require an API key.
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curl https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-1e-ad-files.json
Example response:
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{
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"datasetId": "1f13365b-9ae0-6a97-b60d-faeb4da1a7e5",
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"datasetDownloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-1e-ad-files.zip",
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"name": "Form 1-E AD Files Dataset",
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"updatedAt": "2026-04-16T09:04:12.940Z",
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"earliestSampleDate": "2016-05-01",
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"totalRecords": 2,
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"totalSize": 6011,
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"formTypes": ["1-E AD"],
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"containerFormat": "ZIP",
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"fileTypes": ["HTML", "JSON"],
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"containers": [
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{
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"downloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-1e-ad-files/2026/2026-03.zip",
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"key": "2026/2026-03.zip",
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"size": 3420,
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"records": 1,
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"updatedAt": "2026-04-16T09:04:12.940Z"
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}
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]
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}
Download Entire Dataset: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-1e-ad-files.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY
Downloads the complete dataset as a single ZIP archive containing every monthly container from May 2016 to the latest refresh. Use this for an initial bulk load. Requires an API key.
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curl -o form-1e-ad-files.zip \
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"https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-1e-ad-files.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY"
Download Single Container: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-1e-ad-files/2026/2026-03.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY
Downloads one monthly container identified by the YYYY/YYYY-MM.zip path returned in the index's downloadUrl field. Use this for incremental updates, backfills of specific months, or targeted processing. Requires an API key.
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curl -o 2026-03.zip \
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"https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-1e-ad-files/2026/2026-03.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY"
The dataset covers EDGAR submissions of form type 1-E AD — advertising and sales literature filed under Rule 607 of Regulation E of the Securities Act of 1933. It does not include the underlying Form 1-E offering circular, any Form 1-E/A amendments, or any other form type.
One record is a single EDGAR submission keyed on an 18-digit accession number: one advertising or sales-literature package filed by an SBIC or BDC under Rule 607. The record bundles a metadata.json header with every HTML document from the original submission, each preserved in its EDGAR SGML <DOCUMENT> wrapper. Multiple pieces of sales literature filed in the same accession (for example a tombstone, a cover letter, and a broadcast script) share one record.
Only two classes of issuer are eligible: small business investment companies (SBICs) licensed under the Small Business Investment Act of 1958, and business development companies (BDCs) as defined in Section 2(a)(48) of the Investment Company Act of 1940. Rule 607 requires the issuer to file any advertisement, broadcast script, letter, or similar communication that will be distributed to more than ten persons in connection with a Regulation E offering, at least five business days before first use.
The dataset includes all Form 1-E AD filings submitted to EDGAR from 1 May 2016 to present. Rule 607's substantive requirements — the five-business-day advance-filing window, the more-than-ten-persons distribution threshold, and the materially-misleading-or-omissions review standard — have not changed since the dataset began.
The dataset is distributed as ZIP containers organized by calendar month (YYYY/YYYY-MM.zip). Inside each container, every accession is a folder containing one metadata.json and one or more HTML advertising documents. The constituent file types are HTML and JSON; GRAPHIC exhibits and the aggregated complete-submission .txt file are cataloged via URLs in metadata.json but are not physically redistributed.
Form 1-A AD covers Rule 255 "test-the-waters" soliciting materials under Regulation A, open to a broader pool of issuers and governed by legend-and-filing obligations rather than a mandatory five-day pre-filing. Rule 482 fund ads are filed by registered investment companies (via the Form 497 family) for registered offerings and use a post-use filing posture. Form 1-E AD is confined to SBIC/BDC exempt offerings under Regulation E and must be on file at least five business days before first use.
The fileNo field in entities[] (formatted 095-nnnnn) is the canonical key for grouping every 1-E AD record tied to the same Regulation E offering, regardless of when each ad was filed. accessionNo identifies the individual advertising submission, and filmNo is unique per accession and is the right identifier for de-duplicating filings.