Disclosure

Affiliate disclosure

How Artificial Examiner may earn a commission from links, why that does not buy the lede, and that we also run Google AdSense.

Disclosure. Some links on Artificial Examiner are affiliate links. If you click one and buy a product, subscribe, or sign up, we may earn a commission — at no extra cost to you. That is an advertising relationship. It is not payment for a headline, a score, or a softened lede.

Opinions and reporting on this site are independent of those commissions. Affiliates do not assign stories, approve copy, or see drafts. A tool we mention in a story is mentioned because it is in the news, not because a network paid for the sentence.

How we mark the links

  • In-article boxes are labeled Affiliate link and point here.
  • The outbound a uses rel="sponsored noopener noreferrer".
  • Stories that contain a callout or an Amazon shop card also set affiliate: true and carry a footer note on the article.
  • Amazon product cards are labeled Affiliate · Amazon and use the same rel.
  • A shop card is added after a story only when the story names a product in the shop catalog and that row has a real buy link. A row with no href is not rendered.
  • Until a program is approved, the href is a placeholder (# or empty). Those boxes say so in plain language. We do not invent live tracking URLs.

Google AdSense

We also run display advertising through Google AdSense (publisher ca-pub-4386698529577104). Ad units are labeled as advertisements. AdSense is separate from affiliate callouts: one is a display network, the other is a commission on a click-through. Neither writes the story. See Privacy for what vendors may collect, and ads.txt for the authorized seller line.

Independence

Advertisers and affiliates do not pick the desk, the kicker, or the pull quote. If a commercial relationship sits next to a story, the story says so. If that bargain breaks, this page changes first — and then the copy. Funding notes also live on About. Sitewide JSON-LD sets ownershipFundingInfo to this URL.

We do not run paid “reviews” dressed as News. Sponsored features, if we ever run them, will be labeled sponsored in the kicker and will not sit on the Opinions desk as if they were ours.

Programs (placeholders until signup)

These keys live in src/data/affiliates.ts. Set the matching PUBLIC_AFFILIATE_* variable at build time, or edit the href on that row, then rebuild. Direct Upload has no runtime env.

  • PartnerStack (SaaS / coding-agent tools) — placeholder (no live URL). Generic SaaS partner links — coding-agent IDEs, developer tools. Paste the approved PartnerStack URL after signup. Env: PUBLIC_AFFILIATE_PARTNERSTACK
  • Impact (network) — placeholder (no live URL). Catch-all for brands we join through Impact. One env var per campaign is fine later; this key is the first slot. Env: PUBLIC_AFFILIATE_IMPACT
  • Amazon Associates — live link. Books and hardware only, when a story actually cites them. StoreID threadandfade-20 from Associates welcome (2026-09-12). Product cards: amazonProducts in frontmatter (asin, title, image or /images/…). Shop URL is /dp/ASIN?tag=threadandfade-20. No PA-API and no build-time scrape. Confirm artificialexaminer.com is an approved storefront in Associates Central. Env: PUBLIC_AFFILIATE_AMAZON
  • Jasper — placeholder (no live URL). Writing / marketing assistants. Placeholder until a Jasper (or successor) partner link is issued. Env: PUBLIC_AFFILIATE_JASPER
  • Notion — placeholder (no live URL). Workspace and docs. Placeholder until Notion issues a tracking link. Env: PUBLIC_AFFILIATE_NOTION
  • Hostinger — placeholder (no live URL). Hosting, if a story is actually about standing a site up. Placeholder until Hostinger approval. Env: PUBLIC_AFFILIATE_HOSTINGER

Amazon shop cards

When a story actually cites a book or a piece of hardware, the post can carry product cards: a photo, the name Amazon sells it under, and a Shop on Amazon button. The button goes to https://www.amazon.com/dp/ASIN?tag=threadandfade-20. The tag is read from the Amazon row above (PUBLIC_AFFILIATE_AMAZON). We do not call Amazon’s Product Advertising API, and the build does not scrape product pages. You supply the ASIN, the title, and an image.

On the post, set affiliate: true and add:

amazonProducts:
  - asin: B0GMWYYRQL
    title: "SanDisk 1TB Extreme Portable SSD, up to 2000MB/s, new model"
    image: "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71u6LfJqm-L._AC_SL500_.jpg"
    blurb: "One factual line about why the story mentioned it. Not a review."

Images are an https:// URL on an Amazon media host (m.media-amazon.com and the regional ssl-images-amazon.com hosts) or a file you put in public/images/ and reference as /images/…. An optional url is kept only when it is already an https://www.amazon.com link for that same ASIN; the Associates tag is still applied. Cards from frontmatter render after the article body. To place one card mid-story, use AmazonProductCard in the MDX and do not also list that ASIN in amazonProducts.

The cards below are examples on this disclosure page. They are not a test, not a rating, and not a review. PartnerStack, Impact, Jasper, Notion, and Hostinger stay placeholders until those programs issue a link.

In-article shop cards

If the headline, dek, or body names a product in src/data/shop-catalog.ts, and that row’s href is a real https buy link, the article layout adds one card after the story. It is the same card as above: photo, name, Affiliate · Amazon, and a Shop on Amazon button with rel="sponsored". The commission line points here. The card is inserted once per product, not on every repetition. An ASIN already listed in amazonProducts, or already placed with AmazonProductCard in the MDX, is not shown a second time.

The live rows are the Amazon products on this page. Their shop links use the Associates tag on the Amazon program above (threadandfade-20). A missing href does not render a card, and we do not invent a tracking URL.

Jasper, Notion, and Hostinger are in that file with no href. Nothing is drawn for them until a program issues a real tracking URL and it is pasted onto the row. Seedance, Grok, SuperGrok, xAI, ChatGPT, OpenAI, Claude, and Anthropic have no publisher affiliate program. The catalog refuses those names. A mention stays an ordinary link or plain text.

What this is not

A commission is not a correction channel. If a fact is wrong, use the corrections policy, not a partner manager. Questions about a specific link: write the desk.