Why we label sponsored content, and what the labels mean

The short version

Web3News is funded by advertising, sponsored content and, in some sections, affiliate commissions. None of that is unusual for a trade publication. What matters is that readers can tell at a glance which words were written independently by the newsroom and which were paid for. So we label, consistently and visibly, and we keep the people who sell sponsorship away from the people who write news.

The labels we use

• Sponsored. The article was paid for by a named company. It may be written by the sponsor or by a commercial writer on our side, never by a newsroom reporter. The label appears above the headline on the article page and on every card that points to it, including the homepage and topic pages. The sponsor's name is stated.
• Press release. Text supplied by a company and published largely as received. We check that it comes from who it claims to come from. We do not vouch for its contents.
• Partner or affiliate disclosure. Reviews and comparison pages may contain commercial relationships with the products listed. Where that is the case, a disclosure sits at the top of the page, not at the bottom.

Anything without one of those labels is editorial. It was commissioned by an editor, reported by a journalist and paid for by nobody outside the building.

Why it matters more on these two beats

Crypto and online gambling are both sectors where readers are frequently being sold something, often something with real financial risk attached. Both have a history of paid promotion dressed up as coverage: token write-ups that read like news, operator rankings ordered by commission rate. Readers in these sectors have learned to be sceptical, and they are right to be.

Advertising regulators in most major markets also require paid content to be identifiable as such. We treat those rules as a floor.

What sponsorship does not buy

A sponsor cannot buy coverage on the news desks, see a news article before publication, request changes to reporting, or have an unfavourable story held or softened. Review scores are set by the editorial team using a published method, and commercial relationships have no input into the rating. If we ever lose an advertiser over a story, that is a cost of doing the job.

We also decline some sponsored content outright: anything promoting a token sale with promised returns, gambling operators we cannot match to a verifiable licence, and any copy that presents gambling as a way to make money or solve financial problems.

If we get it wrong

Labels are applied by people, and people miss things. If you see a piece that reads like promotion and carries no label, tell us through the corrections address on the contact page. We will check it, fix it if needed and say that we did.