How advertising works

What we sell

Two banner slots, in fixed positions on the page. That is the whole of what is for sale on SmartChecker.

We used to say that no company pays to appear here. That is no longer true, so we have stopped saying it. A company we list or review may now buy a banner. What has not changed — and what this page exists to hold us to — is that the money buys the space inside the frame and nothing else.

The rules we hold ourselves to

• Advertising may be bought by any business, including a company listed or reviewed on this site.
• An advertiser’s banner never appears on its own record page or its own SC Visit page.
• A banner cannot be bought for one named company’s page. Space is sold site-wide or by section, never beside a particular company.
• Every banner is labelled as an advertisement, with the advertiser named, before the creative. The label cannot be switched off.
• A banner cannot claim or imply a licence, an approval, a regulator’s endorsement, or SmartChecker’s endorsement, and cannot use a regulator’s name.
• A banner cannot promise a return, a profit or a risk-free outcome, or promote an offering of securities that has not been approved.
• Buying a banner changes no register fact, no review, no rating, no position in any list, and no editorial piece.
• Where nothing is booked, the slot carries SmartChecker’s own notice. It is never filled with a third party’s brand for decoration.

Where a banner never appears

An advertiser’s banner is kept off its own record page and its own SC Visit page. A company paying for display space on the page that assesses it is the one arrangement this site exists not to have, so it is blocked in the software rather than promised in a policy.

Space also cannot be bought for one named company’s page. Banners are sold across the site or by section — the home page, the news pages, or company pages as a group. A competitor buying the space beside a rival’s reviews would be buying a position on that rival’s record, which is the same sale under another name.

What a payment does not buy

A place in the directory, or a better position in any list. A change to a register fact, or to the date it was checked. A rating, or any part of one. The removal or addition of a review. A word of SmartChecker’s own writing — the assessment on a company page, an article, a field visit report, or a measured figure.

No company is told in advance what SmartChecker will publish about it, whether or not it advertises.

How to tell a banner from a record

Every banner carries a label above it reading “Advertisement” and the name of the advertiser who paid for it. The label cannot be switched off, and a banner is never styled to look like a record, a rating or a review. Its link opens in a new tab and is marked nofollow sponsored, so it passes no search ranking from this site.

Where nothing is booked, the slot carries our own notice inviting enquiries. It is never filled with another company’s brand for decoration.

If you think we have broken one of these rules

Tell us, and we will publish what we find. Write to support@smartchecker.my, or use the correction request page. A banner that breaks a rule on this page comes down; the rule does not get rewritten to fit it.