Commercial content and The Big Issue

The Big Issue prides itself on its independence and ability to stand up for those in need, create opportunity, and break the cycle of poverty. Sometimes third-party organisations will help us to do that by paying to support our work through advertising, and we want to be transparent with our readers about what this means.

Commercial content on BigIssue.com is labelled in the following ways:

“Supported by/In association with”

Sometimes a third party may want to support specific parts of The Big Issue’s editorial output and be associated with it but will not be involved in its creation. We label these pieces of work as “supported by” or “in association with”. In these cases they may suggest an area of focus but they have no input or control over the editorial process or the final product.

“Paid for by/Advertorial”

If content is labelled “paid for by” or “advertorial’’ it indicates that an advertiser has paid for and had control over elements of the final editorial product. This content is produced by journalists, overseen by The Big Issue commercial department in partnership with the advertiser, with input from the The Big Issue editorial team.

“Advertiser content”

An advertisement feature is content produced by an advertiser and published by The Big Issue. This content must always meet our editorial standards but will not be produced by the editorial team.