Our advertising principles

We run ads to help fund our journalism. To ensure advertising doesn’t compromise our editorial integrity, we follow five principles:

1. Ads always come with a label like “advertisement” or “sponsor message.” If content doesn’t have a label like this, readers can assume it was produced independently, without the control or influence of sponsors.

2. To avoid conflicts of interest, we don’t accept sponsorships from companies we are likely to write about — you won’t see ads for companies like Anthropic, Waymo, or Nvidia.

3. Occasionally a sponsor may be in the news unexpectedly. If this happens and we mention a current or recent sponsor1 in a story, we will disclose the relationship.

4. We don’t consult sponsors about story topics or angles, nor do we allow them to read stories before they are published — though we may allow them to sponsor coverage of broad topics such as education, science, or robotics.

5. We don’t allow sponsors to advertise on stories related to their own industry or lobbying interests. For example, a story about data centers can’t be sponsored by a company that builds or operates data centers.