Advertiser and Affiliate Policy

Why We Publish This Policy

Medical students and graduates navigating residency applications are making high-stakes decisions under time pressure, often without access to the insider knowledge that well-connected programs and advisors take for granted. When a site like this one recommends a study resource, a review course, or a piece of software, readers deserve to know whether that recommendation was reached independently or whether money changed hands. This policy exists because you should never have to guess.

Publishing a clear, specific account of how PGY Zero is funded is not a legal formality. It is the precondition for the site's usefulness. An advice resource with undisclosed financial entanglements is not an advice resource; it is advertising in editorial clothing. We have no interest in being that.

How PGY Zero Makes Money

PGY Zero currently generates revenue through the following mechanisms:

• Display advertising. Advertisements served by third-party ad networks appear on page. These are paid placements. The advertisers do not know in advance what editorial content will appear alongside their ads, and they have no input on it.
• Affiliate commissions. When readers click certain links on this site and subsequently make a purchase, PGY Zero may receive a commission from the seller. The mechanism is described in detail in the next section.
• Sponsored content. Occasionally, a company pays for a post or content unit that features their product or service. These are always labeled. The labeling conventions are described below.
• Direct partnerships. In some cases, PGY Zero may enter a direct commercial relationship with a company — for example, a negotiated promotional rate for readers. These relationships are disclosed wherever they appear.

If a new revenue stream is added that is material to how content is produced or which products are recommended, this policy will be updated before that stream goes live.

What "Affiliate Link" Actually Means

An affiliate link is a tracked URL. When you click it, the destination website records that you arrived from PGY Zero. If you then make a purchase — usually within a defined window — the destination site pays PGY Zero a commission, typically a small percentage of the sale price. That commission comes out of the seller's margin, not yours. The price you pay is identical to the price you would pay if you navigated directly to the seller's site without clicking through here. Affiliate status does not add cost to you.

The tracking is done through cookies and URL parameters. If you clear your cookies or use certain browser privacy settings, the tracking may not register, meaning PGY Zero would receive no commission for that purchase. That is fine. The purpose of noting it is transparency, not to ask you to preserve tracking.

Where You Will See Affiliate Links on This Site

Affiliate links appear in specific, bounded contexts. They do not appear in core editorial content such as specialty overviews, application strategy guides, or interview preparation frameworks. The contexts where affiliate links may appear include:

• Resource roundup pages — lists of study tools, question banks, or board preparation resources where multiple options are compared.
• Book and course recommendation lists — pages that name specific titles or programs and link to purchase or enrollment pages.
• Gear and equipment lists — for example, equipment relevant to clinical rotations or residency preparation.
• Individual product or service review pages — standalone assessments of a specific resource. If the review page contains an affiliate link, the disclosure banner appears at the top of that page.

Each of these page types carries a disclosure. If you are ever uncertain whether a link is an affiliate link, you can hover over it: affiliate links will generally contain a tracking parameter or redirect domain that differs from the destination's root URL. When in doubt, assume it may be one and consult this policy.

Our Disclosure Practice

Disclosures appear in three locations, depending on content type:

• Top-of-page banner. Any page that contains affiliate links or sponsored content displays a clearly worded disclosure at the top, before the first paragraph. The banner appears above the fold on all device sizes. It is not tucked into a footer or buried in a sidebar.
• Inline callouts. In long-form content where affiliate links appear among non-affiliate links, an inline note adjacent to the specific link identifies it as an affiliate relationship. This prevents readers from having to cross-reference the page banner with every URL.
• Image and caption labels. If a sponsored image, badge, or graphic appears in the content, the caption or alt text identifies it as a paid placement.

The disclosure language used is plain English, not legal boilerplate. "This link is an affiliate link; we may earn a commission if you purchase through it, at no extra cost to you" is the standard formulation. Variations appear only when the context requires more specific description.

Editorial Independence

Advertisers and affiliate partners have no input on editorial content, ratings, rankings, or recommendations. The commercial side of PGY Zero and the editorial side operate with explicit separation:

• Advertisers may not request, review, or approve editorial content before publication.
• Affiliate status does not determine whether a product is included in a roundup, nor does it affect the order in which products are listed or the tone of the assessment.
• A product that performs poorly by our evaluation criteria will be described as performing poorly, regardless of whether the seller has a commercial relationship with this site. If an affiliate relationship exists with a product we cannot recommend, we will either end the affiliate relationship or decline to feature the product. We will not publish a favorable review we do not believe.
• If a direct partnership or sponsored arrangement requires us to present a product more favorably than our assessment supports, we will not enter or will terminate that arrangement.

These are operational commitments, not aspirational language. The site's value to readers depends entirely on the reliability of its assessments. A recommendation inflated by a commercial relationship is worthless at best and harmful at worst, given the stakes involved in residency preparation.

How We Choose Affiliate Partners

PGY Zero applies for or accepts affiliate relationships only with products and services that meet all of the following criteria:

• Relevance. The product or service must be directly useful to the medical student, graduate, or residency applicant audience. General consumer products with tenuous connections to the medical education journey are not pursued.
• Independent assessment first. Editorial evaluation of the product must precede any affiliate application. We do not apply for an affiliate relationship with a product we have not used, reviewed, or assessed against the needs of our audience.
• Quality threshold. The product must clear a minimum threshold of usefulness and accuracy. For study resources, this means content that is current, accurate, and pedagogically coherent. Resources that teach outdated information or misrepresent how the residency application process works do not qualify regardless of commission rate.
• Pricing fairness. We will not affiliate with products whose pricing is exploitative relative to the value provided, particularly given that a substantial portion of this site's audience is carrying significant educational debt.
• Company reputation. Companies with a documented pattern of deceptive marketing, predatory practices, or poor customer service are excluded.

Commission rate does not factor into affiliate partner selection. A higher commission from a lower-quality product is not a trade we make.

Sponsored and Paid Content

Sponsored content is content for which a company has paid, in part or in full, for placement on this site. It is distinct from affiliate content, in which the commercial relationship is triggered by reader action rather than a fee for publication.

All sponsored content on PGY Zero is labeled with one of the following designations, appearing at the top of the content unit and in any social distribution:

• "Sponsored" — the company paid for placement and the content was produced in collaboration with or by the company.
• "Paid Partnership" — a direct commercial relationship exists, and the content reflects that relationship.

Sponsored content is subject to the same fact-checking standards as organic editorial content. A company paying for placement does not purchase the right to publish inaccurate claims on this site. If a sponsor's requested content cannot be verified or conflicts with what we know to be true about the application process, the content will be revised or the placement declined.

Sponsored content will not appear in the core application strategy, specialty selection, or interview preparation sections of the site. Those sections remain organic and unsponsored by design.

Advertiser Criteria and Restrictions

Display advertising on PGY Zero is served primarily through third-party ad networks, which means the site does not individually approve every advertisement that appears. However, PGY Zero applies category-level restrictions through its ad network settings, and direct advertising relationships are reviewed individually.

Categories that are categorically excluded from direct advertising relationships with PGY Zero include:

• Predatory loan products or financial services targeting medical students with deceptive terms.
• Unaccredited programs or institutions misrepresenting their accreditation status or match outcomes.
• Study tools or question banks that make false or unverifiable claims about pass rates, score improvement, or match outcomes.
• Diploma mills or credential services of any kind.
• Products making specific medical claims that are not supported by published evidence.

If a display ad from a third-party network appears on this site that belongs to a restricted category — which can happen because programmatic networks are imperfect — readers are encouraged to report it using the contact information at the bottom of this page. We will use the report to update our network exclusion settings.

Third-Party Ad Networks

PGY Zero uses third-party advertising networks to serve display ads. These networks may use cookies, pixels, and device identifiers to serve ads based on your browsing history and inferred interests. This is standard practice in programmatic advertising and is not specific to this site.

If you prefer not to receive personalized advertising:

• Google's ad personalization controls are available at adssettings.google.com.
• The Network Advertising Initiative opt-out tool is available at optout.networkadvertising.org.
• The Digital Advertising Alliance opt-out tool is available at optout.aboutads.info.

These opt-outs do not remove advertising from your experience; they limit the personalization of the ads served. For additional detail on how data is handled in connection with advertising, see the PGY Zero Privacy Policy.

FTC Compliance

PGY Zero's disclosure practices are designed to comply with the United States Federal Trade Commission's guidelines on endorsements and testimonials, codified at 16 CFR Part 255. Those guidelines require that any material connection between an endorser and a seller — including affiliate commissions, free products received for review, or payment for sponsored content — be clearly and conspicuously disclosed to readers.

In practical terms, this means: if money flows to PGY Zero in connection with a product mentioned on this site, that connection is disclosed in a place and manner that a reader would notice before relying on the recommendation. Disclosures in footnotes, fine print, or linked-away policy pages do not meet that standard, and we do not use them as the primary disclosure mechanism.

If you believe a piece of content on this site has a material connection that is not disclosed, please report it. The process is described in the next section.

How to Report a Concern

If you encounter content on PGY Zero that you believe involves an undisclosed commercial relationship, a disclosure that is broken or unclear, or a recommendation you have reason to believe was influenced by advertiser or sponsor pressure, we want to know.

Use the contact form at /contact/ and select the subject line "Editorial / Disclosure Concern." Include the URL of the page in question and a brief description of your concern. Every report is reviewed by the editorial team, not filtered by a commercial or administrative function first.

We will not publish your report without your permission, and we will not retaliate against readers who raise concerns in good faith. If a report identifies a genuine problem, the relevant content will be corrected or removed and this policy updated if needed.

Policy Updates

This policy is reviewed whenever a new revenue stream is added, a new category of advertiser relationship is established, or regulatory guidance material to its provisions changes. It is also reviewed on a periodic basis regardless of triggering events.

Material changes — meaning changes that affect how disclosures work, what categories of advertiser are accepted, or how affiliate links are used — will be noted at the top of this page with the nature of the change and the date it took effect. Non-material clarifications, such as improved language for an existing practice, are made without separate announcement.

The current version of this policy is identified by its last-updated date, displayed below.

Last updated: June 2025