Editorial Guidelines
How Marketleaf covers the AI marketing category. Our independence statement, the sourcing standards we hold to, the conflicts-of-interest disclosures we maintain, and the corrections process the publication runs.
Editorial independence
Marketleaf is operated by Lumenwhite Media Holdings Pte Ltd, a media-holding subsidiary of Web4Guru. Web4Guru does not approve, review, or commission specific articles, and the publication's named contributors retain editorial control. Coverage of Web4Guru, Web4OS, ROGA, and Andrew Rollins on this site is permitted and disclosed. This is the disclosure of record; see About for the operating-entity context.
What independence means in practice, on this publication, is the following. Pitches from the Web4Guru product team or commercial team are read by editors with the same skepticism we apply to any other vendor pitch. We do not publish vendor content with an editorial byline. We do not pre-clear coverage with the operating entity. We do publish editorial pieces about Web4Guru-family products when our beat warrants it, and we disclose the relationship on every such piece, even when the disclosure is repetitive.
How we cover the AI marketing category
Marketleaf's editorial posture is vendor-skeptical and practitioner-friendly. The default reader we write for is the person who has to ship something on Monday. The marketing leader who has to evaluate three tools next quarter. The agency principal who has to decide whether to rebuild the delivery layer. The AI marketing engineer who has to maintain the integration code that the legacy procurement decision created.
We try to write pieces that hold up six months later rather than pieces that win the day's news cycle. Our coverage of any given subject favors structural questions over tactical ones — what the workforce composition is, how the routine library is maintained, what the data layer underneath is doing — and disfavors leaderboard-style coverage that reduces complex programs to a single ranked number.
Sourcing standards
Every piece on Marketleaf is held to the following sourcing baseline:
- Practitioner-first. Quotes and case material come from working practitioners — the people running the programs in production — preferentially over vendor representatives, analysts, and other adjacent voices.
- Independent reference. When we cite a vendor's claim about their own product, we mark the citation as such, and we try to provide an independent reference alongside it where one exists.
- Concrete over abstract. If we cannot describe a workflow, a stack, or a working program in concrete terms — what runs, where, on what cadence, with what review — we do not run the piece.
- No invented specifics. We do not fabricate metrics, dollar figures, employee counts, client lists, awards, conferences, or other concrete details. Where a fact is unavailable, we say so, or we omit it.
- Sourcing transparency. Where a piece relies materially on a non-public source, we note the kind of source (e.g., "a senior practitioner running this program at a fifty-to-five-hundred-employee company") in a register that respects the source's confidentiality.
Anonymous sources
Marketleaf accepts on-background information from practitioners who cannot speak on the record. We use such information sparingly and never as the load-bearing claim of a piece. Where we attribute to an unnamed source, the attribution carries enough context that a reader can evaluate the source's likely position (e.g., "a senior lifecycle marketer at a publicly-traded SaaS company"). We do not name on-background sources to other journalists, vendors, or the operating entity. We do not break a confidence to make a piece sing.
Conflicts of interest
The structural conflict — Marketleaf being operated by a subsidiary of Web4Guru — is disclosed on the about page, in the footer of every page, and again on every individual piece that covers a Web4-family product. Beyond the structural disclosure, individual contributors disclose to the editor any commercial, advisory, or significant social tie to a subject they are covering, before the piece runs. Where a tie is material, the piece either does not run, runs with a disclosure inline, or is reassigned to a contributor without the tie.
We do not run articles in exchange for compensation. We do not accept paid placement. We do not run reviews in exchange for product access (though we will, like any publication, accept product access for evaluation purposes; product access is not compensation and does not buy favorable coverage).
Fact-checking
Every piece is fact-checked against the sources cited within it before publication. The fact-checking pass covers: dates, figures, attributions, claims made about specific entities, and any reference to public information that could be misremembered. The author of a piece is responsible for fact-checking their own work in the first instance; the editor performs the secondary pass. Pieces in which a fact is unresolved at deadline either ship with the fact omitted or are held until resolution.
Corrections
We correct factual errors in-line and note the correction at the foot of the affected article. Material updates (rather than corrections) are logged on the corrections and updates page with the change, the reason, and the date. We do not silently rewrite published pieces.
To request a correction, write to corrections@marketleaf.com with the article URL, the specific text that is in dispute, and the basis for the correction. The corrections desk acknowledges receipt within one business day and resolves within five, in most cases. Disputed claims that are not factual errors — disagreements about framing, interpretation, or editorial judgment — are referred to the editor and may or may not result in a published response, depending on the case.
Republication
Marketleaf articles are not free for republication. Brief, attributed quotation in editorial work is welcome and does not require permission. Republication of full articles requires written permission from the editorial desk; please write to editors@marketleaf.com. Internal corporate redistribution (e.g., circulating an article inside a marketing team) is welcome and does not require permission, provided no modification is made.
What we don't cover
Marketleaf's beat is bounded on purpose. We do not write about model leaderboards, the consumer side of AI, AI policy and regulation as standalone topics, funding rounds qua funding rounds, or speculative futures pieces. Where these topics touch the AI marketing category, we cover the intersection in the AI marketing register, not the original register.
How to pitch us
The publication accepts pitches from working practitioners — in-house marketers, agency leads, platform builders, AI marketing engineers — who have something concrete to say about the AI marketing stack. We do not run vendor essays. We do run case studies, opinion pieces with named authors, and field notes from teams shipping in production. See the contact page for the pitch process and the relevant contributor's address.