How to assess a sponsored editorial placement before you pay

Six checks for a brand or agency weighing a paid article on someone else’s publication: relevance, audience evidence, editorial terms, disclosure, links and cost.

By RAVOA · 6 October 2026 · 6 min read

A sponsored editorial placement is a paid article, feature or newsletter slot on a publication you do not control. Whether it is worth the money depends on details a rate card rarely shows. These are the checks to run before you agree, and the questions to put to the publisher in writing.

1. Is the publication relevant to your subject?

• Read recent articles, not just the homepage. Does the publication cover your subject regularly, or only once in a while? Would your piece sit naturally beside what it already publishes?
• Check it is still active. Look at the dates of the latest articles, and at whether the site says it has closed or stopped trading.
• Notice how much of it is paid. If most articles are sponsored, consider how readers are likely to treat yours.
• Find out who runs it. A named owner or editor and a working contact route make the later steps easier.

2. What evidence is there of the audience?

Ask for the audience figures in writing and ask what each one measures.

• Location. What share of readers are in the market you want to reach?
• Definition and period. Are the numbers users, sessions or page views, and for which months?
• Source. Are they from the publisher’s own analytics, or a third-party estimate? Treat a publisher’s figures as claims until they are supported, for example by a recent media pack or analytics screenshot.
• Other channels. If the placement includes a newsletter or social post, ask for list size and how it is measured.

SEO tools publish authority scores and traffic estimates for almost any website. Those are the tool vendors’ own estimates, not Google metrics, and the traffic figures typically reflect search traffic, so they say little about newsletter, social or direct readers. Use them to screen a publication, not as proof of an audience.

A large audience is not the same as the right audience. And no figure can tell you in advance how many readers will notice or act on your article.

3. What are the editorial requirements?

Publishers keep editorial control, and a good one may edit or refuse claims. Agree the process before you pay:

• Who writes the article: you, the publisher or a freelancer, and who owns the copyright?
• Length, format, images, style rules and claims the publisher will not accept.
• How many revisions are included, and who gives final approval.
• What happens to your payment if the publisher declines the finished article.
• The publication date: a fixed date, or “within a number of weeks”.
• How long it stays online, whether it can be edited or removed later, and where it will appear (section, homepage, newsletter, social).

4. How will it be disclosed?

In the UK, when an advertiser gives a publisher payment or another reciprocal arrangement to create content, that content is likely to be subject to consumer protection law and to need disclosing as advertising. If the brand also has editorial control over it, the CAP Code applies as well. Section 2 of the Code requires marketing communications to be obviously identifiable as such, and the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) guidance says responsibility lies with both the advertiser and the publisher.

That guidance on advertisement features, last updated 23 March 2023, names “Advertisement Feature” as an appropriate label for advertorial. It says “Ad”, “Advert”, “Advertising”, “Advertisement”, “Ad Feature” and similar labels are very likely to be acceptable if displayed upfront in a prominent, easily noticeable place, and that it would generally advise against “Sponsored” because the word is open to varied interpretation. RAVOA’s preferred label for an advertorial placement is “Advertisement Feature”.

So ask the publisher for the exact label wording and where it will appear, and whether it carries onto newsletters and social shares. A label does not fix a misleading claim: what the article says still has to be accurate and supportable. Never ask a publisher to hide that content is paid. If a piece falls outside the CAP Code, the ASA notes that the Competition and Markets Authority still expects paid content to be indicated to readers.

5. What happens with links?

Google asks that paid links be marked with the sponsored value of the rel attribute. nofollow is also acceptable, though sponsored is preferred. Links marked this way will generally not be followed.

Google’s spam policies say that buying and selling links is a normal part of advertising and sponsorship and is not a violation as long as the links are qualified with rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored". They list as link spam advertorials or native advertising where payment is received for articles that include links that pass ranking credit, and links with optimised anchor text in guest posts or press releases distributed on other sites.

In practice, do not buy a placement expecting better search rankings, and be wary of anyone who promises them. Sensible reasons to buy one are reaching a readership that matters to you and putting your message in a relevant editorial setting. Ask which attribute the publisher will use, then check it on the live page.

6. What will it cost in total?

• The placement fee, and whether VAT is included.
• Writing, editing and images, if they are not yours to supply.
• Extras such as newsletter inclusion or social promotion, priced separately.
• Payment terms: how much, and when.
• Refund or cancellation terms if the piece is not published or is removed early.
• Who you pay, the publisher or an intermediary, and what an intermediary adds for its fee.

Judge the price against what is actually delivered, and against how well the audience evidence stands up.

After it goes live

Check the live page against what was agreed: the address, the date, the label wording, the link and its attribute, and that nothing was changed after your approval. Keep the URL, a screenshot and the invoice with your records.

This is general information, not legal or financial advice, and guidance changes. Check the current ASA/CAP and Google documents: ASA: advertisement features, Google: qualify your outbound links and Google: spam policies. Guidance last read on 6 October 2026.

RAVOA’s process is built around these checks: research against your brief, confirming current rates and requirements with the publisher, and a live check of the article, label and links against the agreed terms. To discuss a brief, email partnerships@ravoa.co.uk.