CIOPages
Editorial Policy

What we sell, what we publish, and the wall between them

We sell advertising and publish independent research to the same audience. This page sets out where the line between the two sits.

Last updated September 2026

Editorial independence Guest contributions Links, PR & coverage Corrections

Section 1

Editorial independence

The analysis is not for sale

Which vendors appear in a Buyer Guide's Vendor Landscape, how we describe them and how we order them are editorial calls, made on market relevance. None of it is for sale.

What we sell is placement, and we label it

Spotlight Listings and Featured Vendor placements are advertising. Each one is labeled “Paid placement,” and each sits in its own block beside the analysis rather than inside it. That follows the FTC's guidance: paid placement should be disclosed clearly enough that nobody mistakes it for editorial judgment.

Paying changes nothing about how we cover you

A Spotlight buyer gets no softer assessment and no better position, and a vendor who has never paid us anything is covered on the same terms. When an assessment is unfavorable, we publish it and tell the buyer why.

Paying does not change your position in search

Directory search ordering ignores what a vendor has bought.

Someone reads every change a vendor submits

Claimed vendors can correct their own record, and nothing goes live unread. We edit for neutrality and take out superlatives, from every vendor.

We do sell advertising, and we label it everywhere it appears. How Spotlight Listings work has the full disclosure, including the review every placement goes through before it runs. How we compile, source and correct the Directory profiles themselves is in How we build Directory listings.

Section 2

Guest contributions

We publish guest bylines selectively and by invitation: a senior operator writing about work they were responsible for. Pitch in a few paragraphs rather than sending a finished draft. We do not publish articles an agency places for a client.

If you’d like to place a piece rather than pitch one

The CIOPages Executive Forum is a paid annual membership for senior leaders, in a section separate from our editorial coverage. Members are reviewed before they are invoiced, every piece is edited to the same standard as everything else here, and each one is labeled as a Paid Guest Contribution on the article and on every card where it appears. Membership does not extend to a dofollow link, a Buyer Guide ranking, or editorial coverage.

The Executive Forum — what it costs, and what it asks of you

Who we publish

  • Sitting or recent CIOs, CTOs, CDOs, CISOs, chief architects and equivalent senior operators
  • Writing under their own name, about work they were personally accountable for
  • On something our readers already come here for: IT strategy, enterprise architecture, AI governance and adoption, technology cost and FinOps, sourcing, and the organizational side of all four
  • With something specific to say: a decision, a number, something that didn't work

What doesn’t work here

  • Unsolicited finished drafts, and articles an agency places for a client. Those go to the Executive Forum
  • Bylines where the named executive didn't write it and the views aren't theirs
  • Pieces that depend on getting a link to a product, client or campaign
  • Anything already published elsewhere, or syndicated across several sites
  • AI-written drafts sent as original work
  • A pitch that ends up recommending your own product. That is advertising, which we sell separately

What a contributor gets

  • Your byline, your title, and a two-line bio
  • One link in the bio: your company or your LinkedIn, your choice
  • Editing for clarity and house style, with the final text back to you before it runs
  • A push through our newsletter and social channels

How to be considered

Send a short note — not a finished article, and not an attachment. Include:

  1. Your role, your organization, and what you were accountable for
  2. A three-sentence thesis: your point of view, not your topic
  3. Three to five bullets of what the piece would cover
  4. Anything you've published before, if you have

If it fits what we’re working on, we’ll come back to you. If you haven’t heard within two weeks, it wasn’t a fit this time — no follow-up needed.

Pitch a contribution

Section 4

Corrections

Corrections are free, we accept them from anyone, and they are never tied to a purchase. Send the URL, the specific error, and a source we can check. We look at it within five business days.

What we’ll correct

  • Factual errors: wrong capability, wrong pricing model, wrong integration, wrong owner
  • Facts that have gone stale after a rename, an acquisition, a funding round or a discontinued product
  • A category that's putting you in front of the wrong buyers
  • Broken or redirected links to your site
  • Anything we've misquoted or credited to the wrong person

Where we hold the line

  • Take down an accurate assessment because it isn't flattering
  • Rewrite our analysis to match a positioning deck
  • Drop a competitor from a guide, or move one to your advantage
  • Swap a factual description for approved marketing language
  • Take a page down in exchange for a purchase, or leave one up in exchange for one

The practical version

This page is the reasoning. The practical version is one page for each thing you can do with us, with the prices and the steps, and it downloads as a PDF in four editions so you can take only the part you need.