Ownership & Funding
A site that tells readers to treat official statements sceptically has no business being vague about its own. This page says who owns The Kissing Punk, where the revenue comes from, and what we would have to disclose if that changed.
Last updated: August 2026.
Who owns the publication
The Kissing Punk is published by a small private company owned by its founding editors. The company is registered where the founders live and work, holds the domain and the trading name, and has no shares held by an outside investor, media group or fund. Its registered particulars sit on the public company register there, and we will send them to any reader, researcher or ratings organisation that asks by email.
There is no parent conglomerate above us and no board seat sold to anyone. The people who decide what gets covered are the people who own the company. That is a clean arrangement with one obvious weakness, which is that any conflict of interest belongs to us rather than to a distant shareholder. Hence the disclosure section further down.
What we are not funded by
No government, state agency or sovereign fund provides money, services or subsidised access to this publication. We have taken nothing from a political party, a candidate, a campaign group, a political action committee or an organisation acting for one, and we will not. No trade association or union funds any part of the site.
We refuse the softer versions of influence as well: no paid trips, no equipment kept after a review, no consultancy work for organisations our reporters cover. Those refusals sit alongside the rest of our commercial rules on our advertise with us page, because advertisers are the people most likely to test them.
Where the money comes from
Advertising is the primary source of revenue and, for the moment, close to all of it. That means display placements filled by the programmatic exchanges that serve our inventory, direct-sold campaigns booked with us, sponsorship of our email edition, and clearly labelled sponsored articles that are never written by our reporters.
Two smaller streams are worth naming. Some product links in buying guides earn a commission when a reader buys, which is disclosed on the article that carries them and never decides what comes top. Occasionally another publisher licenses a piece of ours, paid at the point of licensing, with no say over what we write next. We take no subscriptions, run no membership scheme and hold no crowdfunding balance. If that changes, this page changes before the payment page goes live.
How advertising is kept out of editorial decisions
The commercial side is run by the founders wearing their business hats, and the news list is run by editors wearing the other ones. Reporters are not told which companies are advertising in their sections. Advertisers get no preview of coverage, no notice before a story about them publishes and no right of reply beyond the one any subject of a story gets, which is the chance to comment before publication.
Campaigns have been cancelled here after unflattering coverage and no article was altered because of it. If an advertiser asked us to soften a story, we would decline, then consider whether the request is itself worth reporting. No bonus or target inside this company is tied to traffic on a particular piece. The sourcing rules our editors apply, including the requirement that no story runs on a single official statement, are in our editorial standards.
Grants, donations and reader support
We have accepted no grants, no foundation funding and no donations. We are not closed to the idea of a grant for a specific reporting project, since a lot of the documents work we would like to do costs money that display advertising will not cover on its own.
If that day comes, the terms are set now. Any grant or donation above a nominal amount is named on this page with the funder, the sum, the period and the purpose, and any funder who wants influence over subject, framing, timing or conclusions is turned down at the first meeting. No funder will ever see a draft. We would publish the arrangement before the reporting appeared, not afterwards when somebody noticed.
Conflicts of interest
The founders have worked in journalism and publishing rather than in the industries we cover, and none of them holds a directorship, consultancy or paid advisory role in the automotive, technology, gaming, travel or sports businesses that appear in our coverage. Where anyone here holds shares, they are held in broad funds rather than in individual companies we write about.
Where a connection does exist, whether it is a former employer, a personal relationship or a financial interest, the story goes to a different reporter, and if that is not possible the connection is disclosed in the article itself. This applies to freelance contributors, who tell us about their other clients before we commission them. When we get one of these judgements wrong, the fix is the same as for any other error, and our corrections policy covers it.
Keeping this page honest
Ownership changes, funding changes and new revenue streams get written into this page as they happen rather than at the end of a financial year. That includes a new shareholder, a change of control, the first grant we accept, and any stream that grows large enough to matter to a reader judging our independence.
If something here reads as evasive, or you think a disclosure is missing, tell us at support@thekissingpunk.com and we will either explain it or fix the page. The rest of the picture, including who we are and what we refuse to do, is on our about page.
