What we sell, what we publish, and the wall between them
We sell advertising and publish independent research to the same audience — which only works if the line between the two is drawn in public and holds on a slow month as well as a good one. Here’s where we’ve drawn it and why, so you can hold us to it.
Last updated August 2026
Section 1
Editorial independence
The analysis isn't for sale — and that's what makes the advertising worth buying
Which vendors appear in a Buyer Guide's Vendor Landscape, how they're characterized and how they're ordered are editorial calls made on market relevance. If they could be bought, the guides would stop being useful to the CIOs our advertisers want to reach, and the advertising would be worth nothing.
What we sell is placement, clearly disclosed
Spotlight Listings and Featured Sponsorships are advertising: labeled as paid, bounded in their own module beside the analysis rather than inside it. That follows the FTC's guidance that paid placement should be disclosed clearly enough that no reader mistakes it for editorial judgment.
Paying changes nothing about how we cover you
A Spotlight buyer gets no softer assessment and no preferential ordering — and a vendor who has never paid us a penny is covered on exactly the same terms. We'd rather have the awkward conversation than the quiet exception.
No pay-to-rank, in the code as well as the copy
Directory search ordering ignores listing tier entirely. Whatever position a vendor holds is the position they'd hold if they'd never bought anything.
Every vendor-submitted change gets read
Claimed vendors can correct their own record, and nothing published goes up unread. We edit for neutrality and take out superlatives — from everyone, evenly, including the vendors who pay us.
We do sell advertising, and we say so everywhere it appears — see How Spotlight Listings work for the full disclosure, including the review every placement passes before it goes live.
Section 2
Guest contributions
We publish guest bylines selectively and by invitation, and the ones that land are always the same shape: a senior operator writing about something they were personally on the hook for. If that’s you, we’d genuinely like to hear from you, and the pitch is short — a few paragraphs, not a finished draft. What doesn’t work is an article placed on a client’s behalf, because the value to a reader is entirely in who lived the story.
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, a thing that didn't work — rather than a tour of the obvious
What doesn’t work here
- Unsolicited finished drafts, and articles placed on a client's behalf by an agency
- Bylines where the named executive didn't write it and the argument isn't theirs
- Pieces conditional on a link to a product, client or campaign
- Anything already published elsewhere, or syndicated across several sites
- AI-generated drafts sent as original work
- A vendor pitch in thought-leadership clothing — if the conclusion is the product, it's advertising, and we sell that separately and honestly
What a contributor gets
- Your byline, your title, and a two-line bio
- One link in the bio — your company or your LinkedIn, your call
- Editing for clarity and house style, with the final text back to you before it runs
- Promotion through our newsletter and social channels
How to be considered
Send a short note — not a finished article, and not an attachment. Include:
- Your role, your organization, and what you were accountable for
- A three-sentence thesis: the argument, not the topic
- Three to five bullets of what the piece would cover
- 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 contributionSection 3
Links, PR & coverage
The short version, so nobody spends a week on a follow-up: your free Directory listing already carries a link to your site, and that’s the link we can offer. Links inside our editorial copy are chosen by editors for the reader, so they aren’t purchasable, and we don’t do exchanges, insertions or sponsored articles.
Your listing already links to you, at no cost
Every Directory profile carries your website, and claiming your profile is free. So a link to your site isn't something you need to negotiate for — it's already on the record buyers read when they're comparing your category.
Editorial links are chosen by editors
Inside articles, Buyer Guides and glossary entries, links go where the argument leads — standards bodies, vendor documentation, original research. That's a judgment we make for the reader, so it isn't something we can sell, and there's no price list to ask for.
Advertising links are marked as advertising
Links on paid placements and on vendor-supplied profile fields are marked as advertising, in line with search engines' guidance on paid and self-submitted links. It's the standard every credible directory follows, it keeps both our domain and yours out of trouble, and it's precisely what lets us sell placement without touching the editorial.
We don't trade links
A link from us should mean we thought a reader would want it, which a swap can't. We don't reply individually to exchange requests — not out of rudeness, just volume — so please don't hold a campaign waiting on one.
Reach is the thing worth buying
A placement puts you in front of buyers who are mid-comparison in your category, which is usually the outcome the link request was standing in for. It's self-serve, published pricing, live in about a day.
What to buy instead
If the goal is reaching buyers who are mid-comparison in your category, a disclosed Spotlight placement does that directly — from $99 per guide per year, bought in a few minutes, with no conversation required.
What's for sale changes as we add formats — newsletter sponsorships and other placements may well open later, and this page is where they'll appear first. What doesn't change is the line: advertising is disclosed and sits beside the analysis, and the analysis itself is never for sale.
See open slotsSection 4
Corrections
Getting a fact wrong about a vendor is a failure of the thing we sell, so corrections are free, welcome from anyone, and never tied to a purchase — we’d rather hear it from you than leave it wrong. Send the URL, the specific error, and a source we can check. We review within five business days.
What we’ll correct
- Factual errors: wrong capability, wrong pricing model, wrong integration, wrong ownership
- Stale facts after a rename, an acquisition, a funding round or a discontinued product
- Miscategorization that's putting you in front of the wrong buyers
- Broken or redirected links to your site
- Anything we've misquoted or misattributed
Where we hold the line
- Remove an accurate assessment because it's unflattering
- Rewrite analysis to match a positioning deck
- Remove a competitor from a guide, or reorder 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 behind the answers. The guide itself is organized in three parts — vendor listings, editorial contributions, and these principles — with pricing and step-by-step checklists, and the whole thing downloads as a PDF — in three editions, so you can take just the part you need.