Why We Turn Down Sponsorships and Paid Placements
Our policy is short. Insighthread does not accept paid PR, sponsored analysis or paid placements from the companies it covers.
This post spells out what that means day to day, because a policy only helps you if it is specific.
What a no-paid-placement policy rules out
No company can pay to get favourable coverage. That includes direct payment, and it includes softer versions like bundled packages or promotional deals.
No company profile gets "sponsored" treatment. Every company profile is built the same way from the same filings, whatever the company would like it to say.
There is no advertorial dressed as editorial, and no sponsored slot in the feed that looks like news. If something appears in the news feed, it is there because a filing put it there.
Labelling it "sponsored" does not fix it
The usual defence of paid placements is disclosure: mark it clearly and readers can judge for themselves.
That works reasonably well for a magazine, where readers expect a mix of editorial and advertising.
It does not work for a product whose entire promise is that you can trust what you are looking at. The moment one slot can be bought, you have to wonder about the others, and a small label does not answer that doubt.
A filing-based product has nothing to sell
Insighthread's news is generated from SEC filings. Each item is built from a filed document, links back to it, and is limited to the facts in it, with no opinion and no commentary.
That design leaves no room for a paid story. There is no editorial desk deciding what to cover and no writer who can be asked to be kind. The pipeline turns what was filed into a short item, and that is all it does.
Taking money to change that would not be an extra revenue line. It would mean abandoning the one thing the product is for. We wrote about that choice in why Insighthread only reads SEC filings.
Why companies still try to buy attention
Companies have good reasons to want coverage. Investors read it, and a flattering profile moves opinion.
That is exactly why it matters who is allowed to buy it. A research tool that sells placement slowly turns into a promotion channel, and the people who lose are the investors using it to find out the truth.
How we are paid instead
The money comes from readers. Insighthread is a subscription, $30 a month or $300 a year after a 7-day free trial, and you can see the plans on the pricing page.
That is the structural reason the policy holds. We have no advertiser to keep happy and no sponsor whose coverage depends on a renewal. The broader argument is in ads-funded vs. reader-funded financial media.
What this means when you use it
When you open a company in Insighthread, you can assume nobody paid for what you see. The facts come from filings, the labels come from the same system for every company, and the AI analyst answers from the same documents.
It will not always tell you what you hoped to hear. That is the point.