Hello. I've just completed your classified ads survey and it reminded me why I stopped subscribing to PFK. I started noticing that you were inserting 'un-labelled' advertising into editorial content - maybe I'm old-fashioned for a 26-year-old, but I can't be the only one who finds this highly unethical!! This type of unannounced product placement caused my trust in the magazine to plummet. When advertising and articles are mixed in this way, how can I trust anything PFK publishes? I will always question whether a money-making agenda is taking precedence over the presentation of accurate information. The classified ads survey included questions about product reviews, which is unsurprising but still disappointing. I gather from this that you are looking to up your revenue by selling product reviews instead of presenting an honest opinion (if you're not already doing this)? Anyway, I doubt anyone at the magazine will be concerned by my comments as long as income continues to increase, but it's worth keeping in mind that the further PFK moves toward becoming one huge ad, the more noticeable this will become to readers who haven't caught on yet.

Many thanks for your email, which I have also copied to our advertising department. The ads you refer to are called "advertorials" or "advertising features" and, although I personally do not like them much, they are very popular with some of our more sophisticated advertisers who ultimately help fund the publication. However, they are *always* labeled clearly as such. I'm not sure whether you've seen the magazine since we re-launched in September, but if you'd like to send me your postal address I'll put a free copy in the post to you so you can take a look. There's a regular advertising feature in the issue I'll send, but as you'll see it is marked accordingly. I can honestly assure you that editorially we have very high standards and morals and are constantly at odds with advertisers and the advertising department for the hard line we take. Editorial and advertising are definitely separate things and we certainly cannot be bought and whether a company is a big advertiser will make no difference to the conclusions we draw in our reviews. Indeed, many of our reviews are actually now written by completely impartial reader-reviewers who have absolutely no ties to the magazine whatsoever, other than being keen forum members. We frequently criticise products in our reviews, and if you look at all other aquarium magazines in the market you'll see that we are actually the only magazine, globally as far as I am aware, which does this. I think this in itself demonstrates that we are not swayed by advertising spend and that any review verdicts you read in PFK are a true reflection of the products' performance in our tests. Indeed, many companies are notable in their absence from PFK because they have been disgruntled at previous reviews we have published. I wasn't aware that this email was being distributed, as it's come directly from our central advertising division (which is run separately to editorial) but I assume that any questions relating to reviews are designed to yield data that will help support the ad story when explaining to new companies how effective printed product reviews can be. In terms of the number of ad pages in PFK, I think you may be surprised to see that we also have far fewer than our competitors' titles. The latest issue of our rival magazine Tropical Fish, for example, includes 56 pages in total of which 24 are ad pages - nearly 43% ads. This month's PFK includes 23 ads but 124 pages - just 18.% ads. Anyway, I hope this helps explain our side of things. I can honestly assure you that all advertising features will always be marked as such and that we really do have massive editorial integrity and have never been bought by advertisers. If you'd like to send me your postal address I'll glad send you a recent copy of the new-look magazine so you can judge for yourself. Many thanks for your feedback. Regards, Matt

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