Policy
Advertising and sponsored content
We take money from advertisers and sponsors. This page explains exactly how that content is labeled, so you never have to guess whether what you are reading was paid for.
Last updated August 24, 2026
The principle
A reader should be able to tell, before reading a single paragraph, whether a piece is independent journalism or commercial content. We consider a disclosure that appears only in a footer, only in small print at the end, or only on a policy page like this one to be inadequate.
What the labels mean
We use three categories, and we apply them literally.
A profile of a single company or product where a commercial or affiliate relationship exists between that company and this publication. It is written by our staff, but it is not independent coverage: the subject was not selected on news merit. Facts come from the company's own published materials unless stated otherwise, and we say clearly which claims we could not verify.
Content paid for by an advertiser, where the advertiser had input into the subject or the copy. Our newsroom does not present this as its own reporting.
Everything else. If a story carries no commercial label, no one paid for it, no one outside the newsroom chose the subject, and no one outside the newsroom reviewed it before publication.
Why we label this way
Undisclosed commercial content is a fraud on the reader, and readers are good at detecting it eventually. A publication that blurs the line loses the only asset that makes its independent reporting worth anything.
There is also a search-integrity dimension. Presenting paid content as independent news violates search engines' policies on site reputation abuse, and the penalty applies to the whole domain rather than the individual page. So we mark commercial content in our structured data too: sponsored articles are typed as generic Article with a declared sponsor, never as NewsArticle, which we reserve for independent reporting.
What we will and will not do
Commercial content on this site is still subject to factual rules:
- We attribute company claims to the company and state plainly when a figure is unverified.
- We include the costs, limitations and conditions of a product, not only its benefits.
- We do not write anything we believe to be untrue, in any format, for any price.
- We do not remove or soften independent coverage of a company because it advertises with us.
- We do not accept payment to alter, delay or withdraw a story, and we do not offer favourable coverage as part of an advertising package.
Current disclosed relationships
We disclose standing commercial relationships here as well as in the articles themselves. HL Hunt Financial is affiliated with this publication.
Advertising enquiries
Advertising is handled separately from the newsroom. Write to advertising@fincrunch.example. Please do not send advertising enquiries to reporters — they cannot act on them.
If you believe something on this site is commercial content that we have failed to label, tell the standards editor at corrections@fincrunch.example. Related reading: our editorial standards.