Commercial Content Guidelines

The Drum works closely with its commercial partners to develop content to help them engage its audience. Through close collaborative relationships, we create content that is as valuable to the reader as it is to the advertiser.

Our audience is incredibly valuable to advertisers because of the trust and value readers place in its editorial products. To ensure we maintain that trust, and therefore the value of our audience to advertisers, we have clear, transparent and industry-standard guidelines to enable our readers to understand when and to what extent content has been supported by an advertiser.

We never want to mislead our readers and neither do the commercial organisations we work with, only to provide content of the highest possible value.

The Drum Commercial Content Definitions and Labelling

The Drum accepts payment from third party organisations to support a range of content in its online and print media. This commercial support enables The Drum to both invest further in its editorial operations and to provide an invaluable service to companies wishing to engage our audience.

The Drum strives to ensure all such content adheres to the same high levels of quality and audience relevance as editorial content. Any content supported by commercial partners is clearly labelled, following industry self-regulatory standards.

There are two forms of content supported by an advertiser:

• Sponsored content

  Sponsored content (also labelled 'In association with') is always editorially independent.

  Although the company paying to be associated with it may be involved in its planning, and have its logo displayed, it is created by editorial staff, signed off by the editor and the commercial partner does not have copy approval.

  It is labelled ‘Sponsored content’ or 'in association with' at the head of the article and ‘This content was supported by [name of client] but all content is editorially independent’ at the foot of the article.

• Advertisement feature

  An advertisement feature is content that has been paid for by an advertiser and supplied by the advertiser or developed and produced by The Drum’s content marketing business The Drum Works on its behalf.

  It is regulated by the Advertising Standards Authority and no journalists employed as staff by The Drum are involved in its production.

  It is labelled ‘Advertisement feature’ at the head of the article and ‘This content was paid for by [name of client] and produced by The Drum Works working to the client’s brief, or 'This content was paid for and supplied by [name of client].