What we publish reflects our honest views of products, offerings, and loyalty programs. But we also make money through advertising partnerships with and sponsorships from a lot of the same brands we talk about. Disclosing our advertising relationships is an important part of putting our audience first.
Why disclosures matter
Disclosing our advertising relationships and how we make money is a practice that is consistent with running our business with integrity. And in some cases, it’s required by law. But here’s why it really matters:
As a consumer, disclosures help you better evaluate the information that you’re getting. If you’re getting a product recommendation from a place you trust, it probably feels a bit different if you learn later that that source was paid by that product’s manufacturer. But if you know up front that there’s a financial relationship, you have more of the context you need to evaluate claims and recommendations.
As a publisher, disclosures keep us honest. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. And when we disclose our advertising relationships, it’s much easier to identify if what we’re saying matches up with our commitment to always give you our honest take. In some sense, this is just another check on our editorial process—we promise good, accurate information and our disclosures make it easier to see if we’re living up to this commitment.
How we make money
The Cards and Points website, our various social media channels, and our related properties make money in a variety of ways, many of which are connected to the brands and products we talk about. Here are a few of the most relevant ways we make money:
- Affiliate and referral programs. These programs pay us a commission in some cases when someone clicks through a link from our site and makes a purchase or gets a new credit card. American Express, Capital One, Chase, and QuinStreet are some of our current and recent affiliate and referral partners.
- Network-based advertising placements. These types of advertisements are sold and placed on our content by Google AdWords and other similar networks. Generally we have limited exposure to which brands and products buy advertising placements.
- Internally-sold advertising placements. Sometimes we support the content we make through advertising spots that we sell in videos or our other content. We disclose these in-line during the ad.
- Subscription and membership services. Services like YouTube subscriptions and Patreon give our readers the opportunity to support the content we make by paying for a monthly membership. Often, these memberships come with additional access to our team or pre-release reviews of our content. Sometimes we take feedback from our subscribers into account before publishing content to a wider audience.
Sometimes the brands that we cover grant us things of intangible value. This could include things like special access, product samples, or paid travel. While these types of things have some value in their own right, we generally only accept these types of things if we feel they will help us cover a product or program more quickly, accurately, or completely. We’re not in this for free stuff.
How much control do advertising partners have over our content?
Our opinions, analyses, reviews, and recommendations are not subject to review or approval by advertisers. And as such, our advertising partners aren’t responsible for them. But it would be dishonest to claim that advertising partners have no impact.
Some of the ways we work with advertising partners has a small impact on content. Here’s how:
Financial product compliance. Banks and other financial companies are highly regulated and have some responsibility to ensure that their advertising partners provide accurate information. If a compliance department request flags something that we have published that is inaccurate (or has become outdated) we may change it.
Here are some of the types of requests that a bank’s compliance department might make:
| What we might publish… | What a bank’s compliance department might request… |
|---|---|
| We publish that “The Citi Double Cash Card earns 2% cash back.” | Change that phrasing to, “The Citi Double Cash Card earns 2% cash back: 1% when you buy and 1% when you pay.” |
| An article with a stock image of a card. | Update the card art (stock images of the card) to the current card design. |
| “Chase Ultimate Rewards points are worth 1 cent each.” | Add context and details regarding how you came to that. If it’s based on the cash-back redemption value, state that the points can be redeemed for 1 cent of cash back each. |
| “This card offers Trip Delay Insurance.” | Place a specific legal disclose. about this insurance benefit at the bottom of the page. |
Product details are fair game for compliance requests, but changing our opinion is not. We won’t change star reviews, opinions, or recommendations in response to compliance requests.
Embargoes. Often brands or their PR firms will provide us advance information about product launches, offer updates, or program changes prior to their public release date. In exchange, we agree to not publish content based on the information they provided, until a specific date and time specified in the embargo. When we agree to an embargo. we do it because we think that it help us get you better information.
Ultimately, you are the judge
We think that being very open about how we make money and how we work with our advertising partners will only confirm that we’re worthy of the trust you’ve placed in us. But if you feel that we’re showing something in an unfair light (even if it’s not related to our advertising partners), please comment on our content and let us know. (We do read the comments!)
At the end of the day, we’re creating content for you and you get to judge whether we’re worthy of your trust. On behalf of everyone on the Cards and Points team, thank you for placing that trust in us.
-Aaron
