The Vertropic Coverage Standard
Our published policy on how paid placement is distributed, labelled and described. It applies to every client, on every package, without exception.
Start here
This is paid distribution. So is every press release Apple has ever issued.
A press release is not earned press and we will never pretend that it is. It is your own statement, carried by an outlet, labelled as a release, dated, indexed under your name and read by AI answer engines as source material. That is a legitimate and valuable thing to buy. It is how every public company in America announces news. What is not legitimate is letting you believe a reporter chose to write about you.
This page exists because the gap between those two things is where most of this industry makes its money.
Four commitments, in writing
These are not aspirations. They are the terms we work under, and you are entitled to hold us to every one of them.
01
The disclosure label stays on
Every outlet that carries a press release labels it as one, as a press release, as paid content, as sponsored, as a contributor post. We never ask a publisher to remove that label, we never crop it out of a screenshot, and we do not work with distribution partners who strip it. If a placement would only impress someone who did not notice the label, it is not worth selling.
02
Published on, never featured in
We describe a placement as published on an outlet. We do not say featured in, covered by, profiled by, recognized by, or awarded. Those phrases describe a journalist making a decision about you, and that is not what this is. The distinction sounds small until a client repeats our language to a customer who then checks.
03
We name the exact domain
Before you buy, you see which domain each placement lands on, including when an article publishes on a network affiliate station site or inside a publisher's press-release section rather than its main editorial feed. Affiliate and press-release placements are real and they are worth having. They are simply not the same thing as the newsroom, and you will never learn that from us after the invoice.
04
We tell you what search will and will not do
Some placements are indexed by search engines and can surface when someone searches your name. Others carry a noindex instruction from the publisher and will never appear in search results at all, however real the page is. We check, and we tell you which is which, because a placement that cannot be found is worth something very different from one that can.
What we will never do
Every item on this list is something we have been asked for. Each one is a decline, and the decline is not negotiable at any price.
Remove, hide or crop a publisher's disclosure label.
Describe paid distribution as earned media, journalism, an award or an endorsement.
Write a testimonial, a review or a quote and attribute it to someone who did not say it.
Claim exclusivity in a market we have not actually reserved.
Guarantee a search ranking, a lead volume or a revenue figure.
Publish a release under your name that you have not read and approved.
A standard nobody can check is a slogan
Open any placement we deliver. The disclosure label is on the page. The domain in your address bar is the one we named before you bought. Search the headline in quotation marks and you will find the copies that search engines indexed, and only those. Nothing we hand you depends on you not looking closely.
If you find anything on a placement of ours that contradicts this page, tell us and we will correct it. That offer stands for as long as this page does.
The version that survives scrutiny is the only version worth buying
Coverage exists to be shown to somebody, a seller across a kitchen table, a prospect who just Googled you, a referral deciding whether to call. That person may look closely. Everything we publish under your name is built to hold up when they do.
Questions about any of this?
Ask us anything about how a placement is distributed, labelled or described. We answer in plain language.
Talk to us