Is it a commercial review if only paying for advertising?

[Debbie's Spurts (D.A.)]

If a site offering you reviews on goodreads has a TOS saying

"...With the fee of the [redacted] Program, the author is purchasing advertising space in the [redacted] newsletter and on the website, w ww.[redacted website name]. The author is not purchasing reviews."

Are those reviews considered commercial reviews?

Do they violate review guidelines? Could they post here so long as in compliance with federal law the reviews would disclose "received free copy for honest review and person requesting reviews paid advertising considerations"? Could they post here if only disclosed "received free copy for honest review"?

ETA: Per staff member Yen-Tzu's later request, I have contacted goodreads directly using the contact form (and linking to the review service and threads that led me to ask). Hopefully there will still be a public answer.

[Faith]

I have no idea what, if anything, GR will say, but it seems logical that if you can't get a review unless you pay for the advertising then you are paying for the review. I also have no idea whether that falls into some FTC or tos exceptions, but for me it doesn't pass the smell test. I am assuming that the actual reviewers get no payments and are not employed by the site.

[Debbie's Spurts (D.A.)]

Near as I can tell, the reviewers are not employees and not paid by anything other than a free review copy.

I wanted a staff weigh in because lots of opinions floating around and persons (mea culpa as well) definitely telling others stuff. Including that Amazon removing one of those reviews was a fluke and not a policy of considering that site's reviews to be commercial (not that goodreads can speak on Amazon policy but it's a red flag it might be a commercial review if Amazon does wants them away from their customer reviews in the editorial section only ).

The rules for customer reviews can easily change when anyone is paying for anything. And pretty much, to my knowledge, anything behind a review not readily apparent to general public needs disclosing if in with the unincentivized customer reviews. Whether or not goodreads allows on goodreads.

ETA: their TOS does have a clause forewarning authors that Amazon reserves the right to remove or reject any reviews and that there will be no refunds or compensation in case reviews are rejected. Does specify that Readers are not employed by [redacted] and receive no compensation. ---presumably by "no compensation" they mean beyond the free review copy.

[Yen-Tzu]

Hi D.A.

Would you mind writing in to us at support (at) goodreads (dot) com with links to the content? We'd like to look into this further.

Thanks!