Sponsored Articles Written to Publisher Desk Standard

We hold a sponsored article to forty-five seconds of median engaged time and a quarter of arrivals reaching the final screen. A publisher who cannot report engaged time at article level does not get a second placement from us, whatever the audience figure on the rate card claims, because an article measured only in page views is an article nobody has to defend. How the piece gets written: Reporting first. Every piece we write starts with an interview with someone inside your company who knows something a reader cannot get elsewhere, and usually with a dataset out of your own product. For a marketplace that is supply-side truth: what sellers actually earn, which listings actually clear, how the seasonal curve really moves. No Nordic desk turns that down, because it is the one thing they cannot report themselves. For a pet brand it is more often the vet or the formulator, on the record and quotable by name. The writing happens in Swedish, Norwegian or English by whoever will be read in that market, and it is written to the publisher's own front page conventions rather than to a keyword. The sponsor is named in the first paragraph. Always. A reader who works out on the third screen that they have been reading an advertisement leaves and does not come back to that publisher's sponsored content again, which is a cost the publisher carries and you caused. Labelling and law: In Sweden the identification requirement in marknadsföringslagen and Reklamombudsmannen's practice on native advertising put the label above the headline in the publisher's own house wording, not in a footer and not in grey six-point type. Norway answers to Forbrukertilsynet, Denmark to Forbrugerombudsmanden, same principle and different house wording. We write to the strictest of the three when a piece runs in more than one market, because harmonising downward is how a complaint gets filed. The search question, answered plainly: Since Google's site reputation abuse policy moved into enforcement in March 2025, third-party content sitting on a publisher's domain to borrow its ranking is a liability that lands on the publisher first and on you immediately afterwards. Every outbound link we place carries rel="sponsored". We place for readers. If the reason you want Dagens Nyheter or VG is the link, we are the wrong supplier, and the supplier telling you the link is fine is selling you a risk they will not be around to absorb. What we refuse: Unlabelled placement. Follow links, in any negotiation, at any price. Guest post networks and the intermediaries that resell them. Anything published under a journalist's byline that we wrote. Placement chosen because it was the cheapest inventory available that month. And any piece we cannot name the client in by the second sentence. Who this is not for: Companies with nothing to report. The most common reason a sponsored article fails is not the writing or the publisher, it is that the business had nothing to say and paid to distribute it anyway. If the interview produces no fact a competitor could not also state, we will stop and tell you rather than write around the hole. It is also not for brands who need copy approval over the headline: the publisher's front has rules about what gets clicked there and we side with the desk on that. What you receive: The reported piece, in language, written to the receiving desk's format. The labelling and link markup specified and verified live. Placement negotiated with slot, duration and archive terms in writing. Engaged time and scroll-depth reporting pulled from the publisher and read against our thresholds. And a plain recommendation on whether that publisher earns a second piece.