Advertising policy

This policy governs every commercial relationship Gritwright enters into: display advertising, affiliate arrangements, product samples, gifted access and direct reader support. It sets out what those relationships may and may not influence, and it binds the people who write and edit here as a condition of doing so.

Publishing it is the point. A standard that is not written down is not a standard, it is an intention, and intentions are what erode first when a large enough cheque arrives. Everything below is phrased as a rule we can be held to rather than a value we admire.

Where our money comes from

Gritwright is funded by four things: display advertising, affiliate commission on some links, clearly labelled sponsored content, and direct reader support. What we do not sell is editorial judgement. We do not take payment to review a product, we do not sell placement inside an editorial guide, and we do not accept money to remove or soften an unfavourable verdict.

We are publishing this policy before the money arrives rather than after, because a policy written to accommodate an arrangement that already exists is not a policy, it is a description.

What advertising can never buy

These are absolute. They apply to every current and future commercial relationship, and there is no rate at which any of them becomes available.

• A recommendation. No advertiser, affiliate partner or brand can pay to be recommended, to be included in a guide, or to be ranked above a competitor.
• Advance sight of a guide. No brand reads a guide before it publishes. We do not send drafts for approval, comment or fact-checking to a company whose product we are assessing.
• Removal of criticism. A commercial relationship never causes a guide to be edited, unpublished or quietly weakened. If a claim turns out to be wrong we correct it and date the correction, exactly as we would without the relationship.
• Editorial subject matter. Advertisers do not choose what we write about, and we do not brief writers to cover a topic because it monetises well.
• Access to readers. We do not rent, sell or share the newsletter list, and no advertiser can email our subscribers through us.
• A place inside an editorial guide. Sponsored content lives on its own labelled page. It is never inserted into a guide, and no payment moves a product into one.

How affiliate links work here

An affiliate link pays us a small commission if you buy something after clicking it. The price you pay is identical either way, and the commission is paid by the retailer out of its own margin.

Our rules for using them are deliberately narrow:

• The product is chosen first and the link added afterwards. Never the reverse. A product does not enter a guide because it happens to have a programme.
• The honest answer wins even when it pays nothing. If the best answer is a cheaper product, a second-hand one, borrowing one, or not buying anything at all, that is what we publish.
• Commission rates never affect ordering. We do not rank a higher-paying retailer above a lower-paying one, and we do not swap a recommendation because a programme changed its rate.
• Disclosure sits on the guide. Where an article contains affiliate links, it says so on that page rather than only here.

The disclosure standard we follow

Disclosure is not a legal formality we perform at the bottom of a page. The standard we hold ourselves to is the one the US Federal Trade Commission sets out for endorsements and for advertising that resembles editorial content, and we apply it everywhere rather than only to American readers.

The FTC's endorsement guidance (official source)Official source: ftc.govAn official government health source, so you can read the original rather than our summary. defines a material connection as one "that might affect the weight or credibility that consumers give the endorsement", including payment, a business relationship or a free product, and it requires that such a connection be disclosed clearly and conspicuously. Its guidance on native advertising (official source)Official source: ftc.govAn official government health source, so you can read the original rather than our summary. addresses the related problem of advertising formatted to look like editorial content.

What that means in practice on this site:

Sponsored content and partnerships

We accept sponsored articles, brand partnerships and paid placements, and we are open to enquiries about all of them. What makes that compatible with everything above is that sponsored work is kept structurally separate from editorial work rather than blended into it.

The terms are the same for every sponsor, and they are not negotiable:

• It is labelled, at the top, before the first line of text. The label is in our own words and our own typography, and it says who paid for it. A reader should never have to work out which is which.
• It lives on its own page. Sponsored content is never inserted into an editorial guide, never added to an existing one after publication, and never listed alongside guides as though it were one.
• Paid links are marked for search engines. Every link in sponsored content carries rel="sponsored", as Google's own guidance requires. We are not going to quietly pass authority in exchange for money.
• It does not change a recommendation anywhere else. A sponsorship buys space on a labelled page. It has never bought a place in a guide and never will.
• We can still say no. Category restrictions below apply to sponsors exactly as they apply to advertisers, and we turn work down when the product is one we would not recommend to a reader.
• Accuracy is still our problem. We fact-check sponsored copy and will not publish a claim we believe to be untrue, whatever the client wants it to say.

If you want to work with us, write to info.remove.this@gritwright.com. Tell us what you have in mind and we will tell you honestly whether it fits, including when the answer is no.

Products sent to us

We buy what we test. That is the default and it is what makes the rest of this credible, because a publication that depends on being sent things eventually depends on being liked.

Where a company sends something unsolicited, we do one of three things: return it, donate it, or keep it and name the company in the guide. Receiving a product creates no obligation to write about it, has never guaranteed a favourable verdict, and does not shorten the testing period documented on how we test.

How display advertising is separated

Every advertising unit on this site carries a visible, permanent Advertisement label, and each one has its height reserved in the layout before it loads, so the page does not shift under you while you are reading.

We do not run advertising formats designed to be mistaken for editorial content. That rules out in-feed units styled as article cards, "recommended for you" widgets that are actually paid placements, sponsored posts presented in our own voice, and any unit that borrows our typography or the Gritwright name. If you cannot tell within a second whether something is ours or an advertiser's, we have failed and we would like to be told.

Advertising we will not accept

Some categories are excluded outright, because the harm they do to a reader outweighs anything they could pay us. This list applies regardless of network, rate or format.

• Weight-loss products, fat burners and appetite suppressants.
• Testosterone boosters, SARMs, peptides and anything sold as a legal alternative to steroids.
• Products making before-and-after body transformation claims.
• Gambling, betting, casino and prediction-market products.
• High-cost short-term credit, payday lending and debt consolidation offers.
• Trading platforms, signal services, prop-firm challenges and cryptocurrency speculation.
• Dating products that promise results with other people, and anything sold on manipulation.
• Adult content, and any advertising targeted at people under 18.

Health, money and other sensitive guides

Guides that touch physical risk or personal finance carry an extra restriction beyond the list above. On those pages we will not accept advertising or affiliate arrangements from any company whose commercial interest could distort the recommendation, even where the category itself is otherwise acceptable.

Those guides also carry a named reviewer with relevant credentials, and state plainly that they are information rather than personal medical or financial advice. The relevant disclaimers are on the additional information page.

Reader support

Readers can support the site directly. Direct support is the only revenue that answers purely to readers, and it changes nothing about access: no guide is locked, no page is metered, no newsletter is paywalled, and supporters get no different version of the truth than anybody else.

We are explicit that support is voluntary and buys nothing, because the alternative model, where paying readers get better answers, would mean the free answers were worse on purpose.

If we get this wrong

Tell us at info.remove.this@gritwright.com. If you believe a guide reads like it was influenced by a commercial relationship, that is a serious complaint and we will treat it as one: we will re-examine the guide, publish a dated correction if the criticism holds, and say what happened rather than editing quietly.

If the criticism does not hold, you will still get an answer explaining why. Our editorial process describes how corrections are handled and who can block a publication.