DisclosedConsumer transparency infrastructure · US & Canada

Report card

cnet.com

Insufficient data

Generated 2026-09-17 under SPEC: Scoring — v0.6.12. State: Not scored — below the article threshold.

Do they get paid?

98.2%

Monetization exposure across 29 articles. A fact, never scored.

Do they tell you?

0.250

Article-weighted disclosure deficiency, A = 0 through F = 1. Lower means the disclosure appears earlier relative to the first link.

Does the pay change the picks?

not published

Fewer qualifying articles than SPEC §2.2 requires.

Monetization exposure — what was observed

Ranked picks examined
186
Picks with a link established as affiliate
184
— of which badged (confirmed or likely)
184
— of which runtime-attributed only, never badged
0
Picks whose status was not established
2
Observation coverage
98.9%

A pick whose status was not established is counted apart from a pick observed to be unmonetized. Each reason is published on its own, because they are different situations and one of them is about us rather than about the publisher:

Reason the status was not establishedPicks
cloaked unresolved0
declared sponsored unverified0
no observed link2
external destination unclassified0

Marked sponsored by the publisher — what was observed on those links

Direct merchant links so marked
0
Ranked picks they appear on
0
Carrying a real runtime attribution subtag
0
Carrying the literal "undefined" — the publisher’s code found no program
0

No direct merchant links on this publisher carry the publisher’s own rel="sponsored" without a detected affiliate mechanism.

Declared, not observed

Picks priced from a declared merchant
0
Declared merchants that resolve to no rate card
168
Hosts involved
none

168 further pick(s) declare a merchant we cannot resolve to a rate card — an opaque publisher id, or a merchant whose schedule we do not hold. Those stay unpriced (r = null) and are excluded from the correlation. They are counted here so the gap is visible rather than silent.

Payout–Rank correlation

No correlation is published for this publisher

Not scored — below the article threshold

A qualifying article is one with enough priced picks, enough rated picks, and enough rate coverage for a per-article correlation to exist. This publisher has some, but fewer than the threshold. The count is shown below with the reason each article was excluded. Nothing about the correlation is shown, because the threshold is what decides whether it may be shown at all.

The card records Insufficient data as the headline it would print, and prints no median, no interval and no Kickback Score. The inputs below are published anyway, so the same computation can be run against them.

Disclosure

GradeArticlesShare
A00.0%
B29100.0%
C00.0%
D00.0%
F00.0%

§1.5 is purely positional. The A/B boundary here is measured against the first OUTBOUND link, which is at or before the first AFFILIATE link, so this test is stricter than §1.5 and can only understate a grade, never overstate one.

Diagnostics published beside the figures

Gaming flag count
0
Band-sensitive articles
6
Picks priced from a rate band
27
Picks linking more than one merchant
17

Count of qualifying articles with ρ > 0.99 at n ≤ 5.

Sole-Paid-Pick Placement

Articles with exactly one paid pick
1
Of those, paid pick observed at rank 1
0
Expected at rank 1 by chance
0.1667
z
-0.4472
p
1.0000
SPP₁
0.0000
p-value method
exact_poisson_binomial
Published on the card
no

Not published: §1.6 requires |A₁| ≥ 20 and this publisher has 1.

Articles excluded from the pool, by reason

Exclusion reasonArticles
fewer than 2 priced picks10
fewer than 4 rated picks14
rate coverage undefined0
rate coverage below threshold13
rho undefined5

Reasons may co-occur on the same article, so these counts do not sum to a total.

Right of reply

State: silent. We wrote to this publisher and the seven-day window closed without a reply. Not replying is not agreement with anything on this card, and we do not present it as one.

Written to press@cnet.com, cnet-corrections@cnet.com on 2026-09-10T00:11:11Z. Basis for that address: published press desk and corrections desk Seven-day window closes 2026-09-17T00:11:11.000Z.

Nothing has been received from this publisher.

Confounds, stated by us, first

  1. Reverse causality. A publisher may negotiate a higher rate because it already ranks a product well. The §5 event study partially addresses this by measuring ranking changes after rate changes. It does not eliminate it.
  2. Category confounding. High-commission categories may differ in quality.
  3. Brand-size confounding. Products with affiliate programs skew toward larger brands, which may be better on average.
  4. Rate coverage. We observe roughly half the market. The rate coverage figure on this card is the measured share for this publisher.
  5. Editorial firewalls are real. Where the median ρ is at or below zero, that is stated on this card in the same size type as every other number.
  6. Private-network rate invisibility. Merchants on Impact, CJ, Rakuten and Partnerize keep rates private, so their picks carry r = null and are dropped from ρ. Those are systematically different merchants from Amazon’s — large retailers rather than marketplace sellers. The sign of the resulting bias is indeterminate.
  7. Per-transaction earnings caps and negotiated tiers mean a published nominal rate is an upper-bound proxy for effective compensation. eBay’s published rate card carries a per-transaction cap on every category (550 USD on Electronics, 100 USD on eBay Motors and on Real Estate) and states that exceptions to the rate card exist for certain partners. Roborock publishes 4%–7% and Narwal 4%–10%, and where a given publisher’s tier falls within either band is negotiated privately. On a high-priced item a per-transaction cap can put the amount actually earned, expressed as a percentage of price, below the published rate. This is a disclosure: it moves no estimator and no r_i.

Recompute this

Every input this card was computed from. A third party who cannot recompute a figure from what is published here should treat the figure as unsupported, and we would rather they did.

publisher
cnet.com
spec version
SPEC: Scoring — v0.6.12
generated at
2026-09-17T21:55:39.581Z
card status
insufficient_data
corpus dir
data/corpus
rates dir
data/rates
articles with picks
29
qualifying articles
10
anti recommendation excluded
none
article ids
29 entries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 hosts observed
123 entries
aax-us-east.amazon-adsystem.com
amazon.com
amerisleep.com
anrdoezrs.net
apple.com
apps.apple.com
arxiv.org
assets.tractive.com
assoc-redirect.amazon.com
avocadogreenmattress.com
avocadomattress.n5ka.net
baseus.com
bestbuy.7tiv.net
bestbuy.com
bhphotovideo.com
birchliving.com
blumaka.com
bose.com
brentwoodhome.com
brita.com
brooklynbedding.com
brooklynbedding.pxf.io
buy.geni.us
case.edu
cash.app
cc.cnet.com
chewy.com
click.linksynergy.com
cloudwaterfilters.com
cnet.com
crutchfield.com
deal.incogni.io
dreamfoambedding.com
drop.com
easyoptouts.com
edition.cnn.com
en.wikipedia.org
epi.yale.edu
facebook.com
fitracking.com
focal.com
get.optery.com
global.redmagic.gg
globenewswire.com
go.shopyourlikes.com
greenchef.com
helixsleep.com
help.tractive.com
hoka.com
home.treasury.gov
ieee.org
incogni.com
instagram.com
intel.com
irs.gov
jacksonhewitt.com
jdoqocy.com
joindeleteme.com
justgonewandering.com
kanary.com
kanefootwear.com
kqzyfj.com
lenovo.com
lensrentals.com
libbyapp.com
linkto.hrblock.com
livesans.com
marleyspoon.com
mattressfinder.rvmattress.com
mealpro.net
merriam-webster.com
mygreenmattress.com
mytapscore.com
nestbedding.com
netgear.com
nolahmattress.com
oag.ca.gov
okarecovery.com
omniluxled.com
optery.com
originusa.com
petcube.com
plankmattress.com
plankmattress.pxf.io
play.google.com
plushbeds.com
quiz.helixsleep.com
rd.bizrate.com
roland.com
rollrecovery.com
rorra.com
rvmattress.com
rvmattress.pxf.io
seats.aero
shop.fitracking.com
shop.infraredsauna.com
shopboldr.com
smoothskin.com
snakeriverfarms.com
speedtest.net
sunbasket.com
support.apple.com
target.com
titanmattress.com
titanmattress.pxf.io
tkqlhce.com
tractive.com
tripit.com
us.govee.com
usa.1more.com
usgs.gov
velousfootwear.com
vktry.com
walmart.com
washingtonpost.com
waterpik.com
web.archive.org
wi-fi.org
winkbeds.com
wsj.com
x.com
yosemite.epa.gov
youtube.com
verticals matched
14 entries
GPS pet trackers
air fryers
cameras
cat water fountains
earbuds
headphones
mattresses
recovery sandals
red light therapy devices
smart sprinklers
tablets
water filters
water flossers
wi-fi routers
amazon rate sources
US
file
data/rates/amazon-us.json
source url
https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/help/node/topic/GRXPHT8U84RAYDXZ
fetched at
2026-09-05T21:56:26.934Z
table sha256
ea97cd4fc12108d018958e8ee57941109c803dd0203bbd4f4715069c0b21408d
default rate
0.04
CA
file
data/rates/amazon-ca.json
source url
https://associates.amazon.ca/help/node/topic/GRXPHT8U84RAYDXZ
fetched at
2026-09-05T21:56:32.508Z
table sha256
6876ec738879654e535a0340d81268aacc55e2b938d08c96416b8c856eda55ba
default rate
0.02
merchant rate card
data/rates/merchants.json
snapshot index
data/corpus/snapshots.jsonl
inclusion criteria
min priced picks k
2
min rated picks n
4
min rate coverage C
0.6
min qualifying articles
20
kickback weights
R
0.75
O
0.25
version
3.0.0
disclosure deficiency scale
A
0
B
0.25
C
0.5
D
0.75
F
1
bootstrap resamples
2000
quantile method
type-7 (linear interpolation; the R and NumPy default)
ci percentile convention
lower bound at floor(0.025 * B), upper bound at ceil(0.975 * B) - 1 (positions 50 and 1949 at B = 2000)

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