ItsReleased does two things that have to stay separate. We publish verdicts on new products, and we offer brands paid, sponsored placement — the packages listed on our For Brands page. This page is the written line between the two: what money can buy here, what it cannot, and how you can check.
How verdicts are decided
Every verdict on this site — Worth it, Wait for a deal, Skip, or Too early to tell — is set by our editorial team as part of our own assessment of the product: its Australian price, its specifications checked against the manufacturer’s information, and the alternatives on sale here. Verdicts, and the scorecard scores shown alongside them, are entered in our editorial tools by editors. There is no package, form or payment route by which a brand can set, raise or soften one.
Verdicts do change — when prices move or new information arrives. When an editor changes a verdict, the change is dated, the previous verdict is kept in the article’s verdict history, and the change appears in our public Verdict Ledger.
What payment can buy — and what it cannot
Payment can buy placement, and placement only: a sponsored launch article, a featured position in a buying guide, or a launch bundle, as described on the For Brands page. Anything published under one of those packages is labelled as sponsored where it appears (see below).
Payment does not change a verdict, a scorecard score, or the result of a comparison. Our Versus scoreboards are calculated from published price data only, and they say so on the page. Paying for placement also does not remove or soften coverage of a product we have assessed editorially, and it does not buy a position in a ranking presented as our editorial judgement.
How sponsored content is labelled
- On a launch page: a banner at the very top of the article, before the headline content, reading “Sponsored — This launch coverage was paid for by the brand.” Coverage published as a sponsored launch post carries no verdict rating from us; in place of a verdict, the page states that it is sponsored coverage with no verdict rating.
- In listings and cards: a “Sponsored” badge on the item.
- Community submissions: products submitted through Promote Your Product are held for admin review before anything goes live — submitting is not publishing. Approved community products appear with a nofollow, user-generated-content link (rel=”nofollow ugc”). If a community product is ever marked sponsored, it shows a Sponsored badge and its link is marked rel=”sponsored nofollow”.
Affiliate links: the current position
Our site-wide affiliate program is currently switched off, and we are not currently earning affiliate commissions. Retailer links on launch pages are ordinary links marked rel=”nofollow”. If the program is switched on, retailer links on affected pages are marked rel=”sponsored nofollow” and those pages show an affiliate disclosure. The details live in our Affiliate & Advertising Disclosure, which is the page to check for the current position.
If a brand supplies a product
Articles carry a disclosure line for this. If a brand has supplied the product featured, the article’s disclosure line includes “Brand supplied the product”. At the time of writing, no published launch on ItsReleased carries that label.
If you disagree with a verdict
Facts and verdicts are handled differently, deliberately. If a price, specification, date or other fact in an article is wrong, use our Corrections Policy — email the article URL and a source for the correction, and verified factual errors are corrected, price errors first. A verdict is an opinion, not a fact, so it is not handled as a correction and it is not negotiated. If editors do change a verdict, the change is recorded in the Verdict Ledger described above.
Who to contact
Questions about this policy, sponsored placement, or a correction: contact@itsreleased.org. This page sits alongside our Editorial Policy, which sets out how we choose and research what we cover.