Vertropic Publishes Paid Placement Disclosure Policy

Vertropic, a division of Vertex Media & Commerce, has issued its Coverage Standard for distributing client press releases, aiming to distinguish paid placements from earned editorial coverage. The policy requires publisher sponsorship or press-release labels to remain intact, bars describing paid placements as editorial endorsement or using “featured in” to characterize results, and requires clients to be told the exact domain where each release appears. Vertropic also says it will identify which placements are indexed by search engines and which publishers exclude from search results.