Plain-language summary: Colbertism pays its bills with ordinary display advertising, currently served through third-party networks such as Google AdSense. Advertisers never see our articles before publication, never influence what we cover, and cannot buy coverage, links, or favorable treatment at any price. We publish no sponsored posts and no paid placements. We use no affiliate links today; if we ever adopt them, the binding rules in Section 6 already apply. If an ad on this site looks deceptive, offensive, or broken, Section 9 of this advertising disclosure explains how to report it and what we will do about it.
Effective date: August 13, 2026.
1. Purpose and Scope
This page explains how Colbertism earns money, how advertising reaches our pages, and the rules that keep commercial relationships away from editorial judgment. It applies to every page on this site, including articles, archives, category pages, the newsletter, and any format we may launch later. It forms part of our legal documentation alongside the Terms of Use, and like those terms it is governed by the law of the Republic of Indonesia.
In this document, “we”, “us”, and “Colbertism” mean the operator of this publication. “Ad network” means a third-party service that fills advertising slots on our pages through automated auctions. “Affiliate link” means any link that pays us a commission or other consideration when a reader clicks it or completes a purchase or signup after clicking it.
2. How Colbertism Is Funded
Colbertism is an independent economics and markets publication. Our revenue today comes from a single source: display advertising served into clearly marked slots by third-party ad networks. We have no paywall, no sponsor, no parent company, and no investor with a commercial interest in our coverage.
We may in the future add reader-supported options, such as voluntary contributions or a paid newsletter tier. If we do, this page will be updated before any such option launches, and the same principle will govern readers that governs advertisers: money buys access to space or to extra features, never influence over what we publish or how we conclude.
3. Third-Party Advertising Networks, Including Google AdSense
Advertising slots on this site are filled programmatically by third-party networks, currently including Google AdSense. We do not select individual advertisers, and in most cases we do not know which advertiser will appear in a given slot until the ad is rendered in your browser. Networks choose ads in two broad ways:
- Contextual selection, based on the content of the page you are reading, your approximate location, your language, and your device type.
- Interest-based selection, based on cookies and similar identifiers that networks set in your browser, where your consent or applicable law permits it. These technologies, and your choices about them, are governed by our Cookie Policy.
One commitment stands above the mechanics: we never hand reader form data to advertising networks. Nothing you type into our contact form or newsletter subscribe form, including your name, email address, or the content of a message, is shared with, sold to, or matched against any ad network or advertiser. How we handle that data is described in our Privacy Policy.
You can adjust or opt out of personalized advertising directly with the networks: Google’s controls live at https://adssettings.google.com, United States industry opt-outs at https://optout.aboutads.info, and European opt-outs at https://www.youronlinechoices.eu. Opting out does not remove ads; it makes the remaining ads less personalized.
4. Separation of Advertising and Editorial
Advertising and journalism run on separate tracks here, and the separation is structural, not aspirational:
- Ads appear only in standard, visually distinct slots that a reasonable reader can recognize as advertising. We do not dress ads in the typography or layout of our articles.
- No advertiser, agency, or network sees an article before publication, receives advance notice of coverage, or is offered a preview under any arrangement.
- Advertisers have no voice in what we cover, how we frame it, what we conclude, or what we correct. Our reporting choices are made under our Editorial Standards.
- We publish no “advertorial”, no native advertising, and no content whose commercial origin is concealed from the reader in any way.
Appearance of an ad on Colbertism is not an endorsement of the advertiser or its products, as our Disclaimer explains in more detail.
5. Practices We Refuse
The following are declined categorically, regardless of the amount offered:
- Sponsored posts and paid articles of any kind, whether or not labeled.
- Paid placements, paid mentions, or paid rankings of companies, funds, brokers, tokens, or products inside editorial content.
- Undisclosed promotion of any security, asset, service, or venture.
- Selling, renting, or exchanging links for search engine optimization purposes, including “guest posts” whose real purpose is link placement.
- Republishing press releases or supplied copy in exchange for payment or other consideration.
- Accepting payment or any benefit to alter, delay, suppress, or remove coverage, or to withhold a correction.
Requests of this kind arrive regularly at every publication. Ours are refused without negotiation, and persistent solicitation may be published or reported to the relevant platform.
6. Affiliate Links: Current Status and Binding Pre-Commitments
Current status: Colbertism uses no affiliate links. As of the effective date above, no link anywhere on this site earns us a commission, referral fee, or other consideration.
We recognize that this may change. Rather than deciding the rules after money is on the table, we pre-commit now. If Colbertism ever adopts affiliate links, all of the following become binding on us automatically, without exception and without a transition period:
- Registry first. This page will be updated to list every affiliate program we participate in before the first affiliate link goes live, and the table below will be kept current for as long as any program remains active.
- Disclosure at the point of the link. Every page containing an affiliate link will carry a clear disclosure on that page, placed before or immediately adjacent to the link, not buried in a footer or on a separate page.
- Recommendations come first. Editorial judgment will be formed before affiliate availability is checked. Commissions will never dictate what we recommend, how we rank alternatives, or whether we recommend anything at all. Where the best option pays us nothing, we will say so and link to it anyway.
- No cost shifting to readers. We will not use an affiliate link where following it results in a worse price or worse terms for the reader than an ordinary link would.
- No affiliate links in market analysis. Articles analyzing securities, currencies, commodities, or other investable assets will never contain affiliate links to brokers, exchanges, or trading platforms.
| Affiliate program | Start date | Where used |
|---|---|---|
| None. Colbertism participates in no affiliate program. | Not applicable | Not applicable |
7. Review Items, Press Access, and Free Samples
Where we evaluate a product, service, dataset, or publication, we prefer to pay for it ourselves. When that is impractical, the following rules apply:
- Any loaned or free item, complimentary subscription, or press access accepted for review is disclosed inside the piece itself, not merely on this page.
- Loaned items are returned where practical. Items that cannot reasonably be returned are, where feasible, donated rather than kept.
- Acceptance never carries an obligation of coverage, favorable or otherwise, and we say so to the provider in advance.
- Embargoes are honored only when they restrict timing, never when they attempt to restrict our conclusions.
8. Political and Sensitive-Category Advertising
We use the category-blocking controls our ad networks provide to exclude political advertising and categories we consider incompatible with an economics publication read by ordinary savers, including get-rich-quick schemes, unregulated trading signal services, payday and predatory lending, and miracle health products. Where a network offers no block for a category we object to, we weigh that in deciding whether to keep using the network.
Programmatic advertising is imperfect: blocked categories occasionally slip through mislabeled, and network inventories change without notice. Category blocking is therefore a control we operate in good faith, not a guarantee. When something gets through, Section 9 is the fix, and we act on such reports.
9. Reporting a Problematic Ad
If you see an ad on Colbertism that is deceptive, offensive, malware-laden, disruptive (auto-playing audio, forced redirects), or that falls into a category described in Section 8, please report it through our contact form. Because ads are auctioned per impression, we usually cannot see the ad you saw, so evidence matters. Where you safely can, include:
- a screenshot of the ad in place on the page;
- the URL of the article where it appeared, and the approximate date and time;
- the ad’s destination address, obtained by copying the link (long-press on mobile, right-click on desktop) rather than clicking it.
On receipt we will acknowledge your report within five business days, investigate against network records where available, block the advertiser or category through the network’s controls where we can identify it, and escalate the creative to the network’s abuse channel where it appears to violate network policy or law. We do not reply to the advertiser on your behalf or share your identity with any network.
10. Relationship to Other Policies
This disclosure describes money; other documents describe data and conduct. Cookies and similar technologies used by ad networks are governed by the Cookie Policy. Personal data handling, including contact form and newsletter data, is governed by the Privacy Policy. Content standards and independence rules for our journalism live in the Editorial Standards, and limits on reliance on our content in the Disclaimer. All of our legal documents are indexed at colbertism.com/legal/.
11. Changes to This Advertising Disclosure
We review this page at least annually and whenever our monetization changes. Material changes, including the adoption of any affiliate program, any reader-supported option, or any new ad network, will be reflected here with a new effective date before the change takes commercial effect. The pre-commitments in Section 6 may be strengthened by amendment but will not be weakened retroactively for links already published.
12. Questions and Contact
Questions about this disclosure, about a specific ad, or about any commercial relationship described here can be raised through our contact form. Email works too: [email protected]. Messages sent through either route reach the operator directly. Learn more about the publication itself on our about page.