The rules every Advo placement follows.
Advo places sponsored product facts on independent publisher pages that people and AI assistants read. These eight rules apply to every card, every advertiser and every publisher. They’re public so anyone can hold us to them.
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The eight rules
Rule 1: One page for everyone.
Advo never varies content by user agent, IP address or bot detection. The page an AI crawler reads is exactly the page a person sees, card included. Our integrations do read the user agent, but only to count AI crawler visits. It never affects what the page contains. There’s no bot-only page, no markdown-only version and no pre-rendered copy with extra content. Anyone can check this on any page with Symmetry Check.
Rule 2: Labeled, every time.
Every card is labeled “Ad” and names the advertiser, at the top of the card, in text. Not an image, not a tooltip, not a visual effect a crawler can’t read. Publishers can style the card to fit their site, but they can’t remove or hide the label.
Rule 3: Sourced, every claim.
No source, no claim. Every claim links to a public page that supports it as written: the advertiser’s documentation, pricing page or trust center, a third-party audit, or a public listing. Claims are verified before they run and re-verified every week. If a source breaks or changes so it no longer supports the claim, the card pauses automatically until it’s fixed.
Rule 4: Factual, not persuasive.
Cards carry specific, checkable statements, not slogans. No superlatives such as “best,” “#1” or “leading,” and no comparisons with competitors, unless a named, current third-party source supports them and the card says who. No health claims. No financial-performance claims, such as promised revenue, savings or return on investment.
Rule 5: Publisher control.
Publishers approve every advertiser before anything runs, choose which sections carry cards, and can remove any card at any time. Advo never changes editorial content: not a word of an article, not a rating, not a ranking. One card per page, maximum.
Rule 6: Respect crawler choices.
Advo follows each publisher’s robots.txt. If a publisher blocks a crawler, we never try to get content to it another way. No hidden text, no bot-only pages, and no content that exists only in structured data.
Rule 7: Measurement you can inspect.
Our measurement methodology is published on the How it works page. Advertisers get the raw answer behind every answer-check result, with the engine, the date and the sources it cited, not just a score. When something can’t be measured reliably, the report says so.
Rule 8: Disclosure that holds up.
Card labeling follows the FTC’s guidance on native advertising (FTC, 2015) and the Competition Bureau of Canada’s guidance (Competition Bureau Canada, 2015). Symmetry is what makes that disclosure last. When an AI assistant paraphrases a page, an “Ad” label can get lost in the summary. Because the card is visible to people on the same page the crawler read, anyone who follows a fact back to its source finds it labeled.
Claims policy
Allowed, with a public source that supports it
- Features and integrations“Native two-way sync with Gmail and Outlook”
- Plan limits and pricing structure“Free plan for up to 3 users”
- Certifications and audits“SOC 2 Type II audited”
- Data and hosting options“EU data residency available on Business plans”
- Support terms“24/7 email support on all paid plans”
- Product scope“Shared inbox for email, chat and SMS” (Relaypoint)
Not allowed
- Unsupported superlatives“The #1 CRM,” “the best help desk,” “industry-leading”
- Competitor comparisons without a named third-party source“Easier than [competitor]”
- Vague quality claims“Enterprise-grade,” “blazing fast,” “loved by teams”
- Health claims of any kind
- Financial-performance claims“Close 30% more deals,” “guaranteed ROI”
- Forward-looking claims“AI assistant coming soon”
- Claims sourced only to pages behind a login, paywall or form
- Testimonials or customer quotes presented as facts
Allowed only with a named, current third-party source, attributed on the card
- Ratings“Rated 4.7 out of 5 on [named review site], September 2026”
- Awards“Winner, [named award], 2026”
- Rankings and superlatives“Ranked first for ease of use in [named analyst report], 2026”
- Comparisons“[Named independent benchmark] measured faster ticket routing than [competitor], 2026”
The publisher hosting a card can’t be the third-party source for that card’s claims.
How we handle disclosure
Every card is labeled so a reader knows it’s advertising before reading a word of it. On an Advo card, “clearly labeled” means:
- “Ad” and the advertiser’s name come first, before any claim.
- The card is boxed off from the article with a visible border and its own background.
- The label is text in the HTML, so it’s there for screen readers, crawlers and anyone who copies the card.
- “Why am I seeing this?” links to this page.
This follows the FTC’s guidance that native advertising must be clearly identifiable as advertising, with the disclosure in front of or above it. “Ad” is one of the terms the FTC lists as likely to be understood, along with “Advertisement,” “Paid Advertisement” and “Sponsored Advertising Content.” The FTC also notes that “Sponsored by” can read as an advertiser funding content it didn’t write, and our advertisers write their own claims, so the label is “Ad” (FTC, 2015). In Canada, the Competition Bureau warns against ads that pose as independent information (Competition Bureau Canada, 2015), and the advertising code says no ad may be presented in a format that conceals that it is an ad (Ad Standards Canada, Clause 2).
A label alone isn’t enough when AI assistants are in the picture. An assistant that paraphrases a page may drop the word “Ad” from its summary. We can’t control that. What we can control is where the fact lives: on a public page, in a labeled card, shown to people exactly as the crawler saw it. Anyone who follows a fact back to its source can see who paid for it.
- 1“Ad” and the advertiser’s name come first, before any claim.
- 2Boxed off from the article with a visible border and its own background.
- 3Every word is text in the HTML: label, claims and source links.
- 4“Why am I seeing this?” links to this page.
Verify it yourself
Paste any page carrying an Advo card into Symmetry Check. It shows whether the major AI crawlers are served the same page a normal browser gets, and whether robots.txt lets each one in. If an Advo card is ever different for a crawler than for a person, that’s a breach of Rule 1, and we want to know.
thestackreview.example/best-crm-for-startups
Illustrative- Chrome (browser)Identical
- GPTBotIdentical
- OAI-SearchBotIdentical
- ClaudeBotIdentical
- PerplexityBotIdentical
Report a problem
Seen a card that breaks one of these rules? Email arya.yash112@gmail.com with the page URL and what you saw. Anyone can report: readers, publishers, advertisers, competitors, AI engine teams. If a report shows a card breaks the Standard, we pause it until it’s fixed.
If we change these rules, we’ll update this page and the date at the top.