Sponsored content policy

• Sponsored stories are paid for by a partner and marked as sponsored.
• Sponsors have no say over our news coverage.
• We may decline any sponsored work that does not meet our standards.

Why this matters

We want you to trust what you read on Startup Pakistan. Marking paid content clearly, and keeping it apart from our reporting, is part of earning that trust.

What sponsored content is

Sponsored content is a story, a post or another piece of work that a company or organisation pays us to publish. It may be written by the partner, or prepared together with them.

How we mark it

Every sponsored story on our website is marked as sponsored, so you can tell it apart from our news. On our social pages, we aim to make it just as clear when a post is paid for.

We do not present paid content as independent reporting.

Keeping it apart from our news

• Sponsors do not decide what we cover, and they cannot buy a news story.
• Paying for sponsored content does not change how we report on that company in our news.
• We may still report on a sponsor, including when the news is not what they would want.

What we will not publish

We may decline any sponsored content. We will not publish sponsored content that:

• misleads readers, or makes claims the partner cannot support
• hides who paid for it
• is hateful, unlawful or unsafe
• uses other people’s work without permission

Who is responsible for what

A partner is responsible for what it says about its own products and services. We aim to check that sponsored content is not misleading, but publishing it is not an endorsement.

Questions

If you think something should have been marked as sponsored, tell us through the Contact page. If you would like to work with us, our Advertise page explains how.