Affiliate Disclosure

Last updated: 3 September 2026

Adsy Media (operated by Kairen Whittock), carrying on business as Adsy Media, publishes an independent technology and startups magazine at adsy-media.com. Publishing costs money, and part of that cost is met through advertising, sponsorship and affiliate commissions. This page discloses those arrangements plainly, as Canadian and United States advertising law requires and as we think readers are entitled to expect. It forms part of our Terms & Conditions and should be read with our Disclaimer.

1. The short version

Some links on this Site are affiliate links. If you click one and then buy, subscribe or sign up, we may receive a commission or referral fee from the merchant. You pay nothing extra — the commission comes out of the merchant’s margin, not your price. We also publish sponsored content, which is always labelled as such. Neither an affiliate relationship nor a sponsorship buys favourable editorial coverage.

2. What an affiliate link is and how it works

1. We join a merchant’s affiliate programme, or a network that administers programmes for many merchants, and agree to its terms.
2. The programme gives us a tracking identifier. When we link to a product, that identifier is appended to the URL as a parameter, or the link is routed through the network’s redirect domain.
3. When you follow the link, the merchant or network usually sets a cookie in your browser recording that you arrived from us. Cookie windows commonly run from 24 hours to 90 days.
4. If you complete a qualifying action within that window — a purchase, a paid subscription, sometimes a free trial or a verified sign-up — the merchant attributes it to us and pays a commission, calculated as a percentage of the sale or as a flat bounty.
5. We receive reporting on the number of clicks and conversions and the amount earned. Affiliate networks generally do not tell us who you are; we receive aggregate counts, not your identity.

The cookies involved are third-party advertising and measurement cookies. What they are and how to control or block them is set out in our Cookie Policy, and the personal information involved is described in our Privacy Policy. If you would rather not pass a referral, you can copy the merchant’s plain domain into your address bar, strip the tracking parameters from the URL, or block third-party cookies.

3. How affiliate relationships do and do not influence coverage

Our editorial commitments on this point are specific:

• Editorial independence. What we cover, and what we conclude, is decided by editors. Commercial arrangements are handled separately, and no advertiser, sponsor, affiliate merchant or network is given the right to review, approve, amend or veto editorial Content before publication.
• Commission rates do not rank products. We do not order lists, choose winners or award scores by reference to what pays best. Where two comparable products exist and only one has a programme, we still name and link the other.
• We publish negative findings. A merchant’s affiliate programme does not protect it from critical coverage, and we have no obligation to any programme to write anything at all.
• Links are added after the writing. Our normal workflow is that an article is written and edited first, and affiliate links are applied afterwards to products the article already recommends or mentions. We do not insert a product into an article in order to create a link.
• What the arrangement does affect. Realistically, the existence of a programme can influence whether a commerce-oriented round-up gets commissioned at all, because such articles must pay for themselves. That is a commissioning reality, and we disclose it rather than pretend otherwise. It does not affect the assessment inside the article.
• Escalation. If a commercial partner attempts to influence editorial Content, the request is refused and, where relevant to readers, may itself be reported.

4. How we label commercial content and links

5. The kinds of programme we participate in

Rather than list programmes we may join or leave, we describe the categories, and we name the specific merchant or network in the disclosure on each article where a link is used:

• Retailer and marketplace programmes for hardware, developer devices and books.
• Software-as-a-service referral programmes for productivity, developer, analytics and infrastructure tools, typically paying a percentage of the first year’s subscription or a flat bounty per paid account.
• Affiliate networks that administer many merchants under one account and one reporting dashboard.
• Cloud, hosting and domain referral programmes, usually paying a credit or a flat fee per verified paying account.
• Course, certification and job-board referral programmes.

We do not participate in programmes for securities, crypto-asset trading, contracts for difference, consumer credit, gambling or multi-level marketing, and we do not accept affiliate arrangements tied to fundraising or investment coverage. Nothing on the Site is investment advice or an offer of securities; see our Disclaimer.

6. Sponsored posts, paid reviews and gifted units

1. Sponsored content is accepted only where it is lawful, relevant to our readership, and clearly distinguishable from editorial. It is labelled at every point a reader encounters it.
2. We do not sell inclusion in editorial rankings, “best of” lists or awards, and we do not sell the removal of a competitor from one.
3. We do not accept payment to publish an article without disclosure, and we do not accept payment for a link inserted into existing editorial Content. Unsolicited “link insertion” and “guest post for a fee” offers are declined.
4. Review units supplied at no charge or on loan are disclosed in the review. Accepting a unit creates no obligation to review it, to review it favourably, or to review it by any deadline the supplier prefers. Loan units are returned when the review is complete, and where a unit cannot practicably be returned we say so.
5. We do not accept cash, equity, tokens, options or other financial interests in exchange for coverage. Where a contributor holds a financial interest in a company they are writing about, either the interest is disclosed in the article or the assignment is reassigned.

7. Canadian law: the Competition Act and the Competition Bureau

Advertising in Canada is regulated principally under the Competition Act, which is administered and enforced by the Competition Bureau. The provisions most relevant to a publication like ours are:

• Section 74.01(1)(a) — the civil prohibition on making a representation to the public that is false or misleading in a material respect. The test applies to the general impression conveyed as well as to the literal meaning, which is why a disclosure buried at the foot of a page can fail even where nothing said is untrue.
• Section 74.01(1)(b) — performance and efficacy claims must be based on an adequate and proper test made before the representation is made. The Bureau’s position is that a testimonial is generally not adequate proof of performance.
• Section 74.01(1.1) — the drip-pricing provision added by the 2024 amendments in Bill C-59, under which representing a price that is not attainable because of fixed obligatory charges or fees is false or misleading, apart from amounts imposed under an Act of Parliament or of a provincial legislature. Where we quote a price, we aim to quote the attainable all-in price and to identify unavoidable fees.
• Section 74.01(1)(b.1) and (b.2) — environmental and climate-benefit claims about a product or a business must be adequately and properly substantiated, a change also introduced in 2024.
• Section 74.01(3) — for ordinary-selling-price claims about one’s own products, the 2024 amendments shifted the evidentiary burden onto the party making the claim.
• Section 52 — the criminal offence of knowingly or recklessly making materially false or misleading representations.

Testimonials and endorsements must be genuine, must be authorised by the person who gave them, and must not distort the findings or the scope of what was endorsed. Where a material connection exists between the endorser and the promoter — payment, free product, an affiliate commission, an employment or family relationship — the Bureau expects that connection to be disclosed clearly and up front. Penalties are substantial: under the current civil regime administrative monetary penalties can reach $10 million for a corporation on a first occurrence and $15 million on a subsequent occurrence (with alternative measures tied to benefit derived or revenue), and $750,000 and $1 million respectively for an individual. Since 20 June 2025 private parties have also been able to seek remedies before the Competition Tribunal for deceptive marketing. We treat compliance with these provisions as a baseline, not an aspiration.

8. United States law: the FTC Endorsement Guides

For our American readers, and because affiliate merchants are frequently United States businesses, we also follow the Federal Trade Commission’s Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising (16 C.F.R. Part 255), as revised in 2023. In practice this means:

1. disclosing any material connection between us and a merchant that a significant minority of readers would not expect, including affiliate commissions;
2. making the disclosure clear and conspicuous — in plain language, placed where a reader will encounter it before acting, unavoidable, and not confined to a footer, a hover state or a separate page;
3. disclosing on each piece of content, because readers do not necessarily see earlier disclosures;
4. using language that actually communicates the relationship, since the FTC has criticised bare labels such as “affiliate link” as insufficiently informative on their own, and prefers wording such as “paid link” or an explicit statement that we earn a commission;
5. not fabricating, incentivising, suppressing or reordering reviews or testimonials to create a misleading impression, and disclosing any incentive given for a review.

Where the Canadian and United States standards differ, we apply the stricter one to all readers.

9. Questions, complaints and corrections about a disclosure

If you think a disclosure on this Site is missing, unclear, badly placed, or inconsistent with what actually happened, tell us and we will fix it. Write to [email protected] with the article URL and the link or passage concerned. Commercial and partnership enquiries, including sponsorship and advertising, should also go to [email protected]. Formal legal notices should go to [email protected]. Privacy questions about affiliate cookies and tracking go to [email protected]. You can also reach us by telephone at +1 604-850-8125 or by post at Adsy Media (operated by Kairen Whittock), 2090 Lonsdale Cres, Abbotsford, British Columbia, V2T 1C4, Canada.

This page describes our commercial practices and the legal framework we operate under. It is not legal advice.