Our Sponsors

Since we launched WebMD, we have regularly sought sponsorships from relevant organizations, manufacturers, and other leaders dedicated to providing health and lifestyle information. Although there is a commercial benefit for WebMD, sponsor information also benefits you, the WebMD user, by providing you with information on medications, medical devices, health services, therapies, and products available in the marketplace. WebMD provides opportunities for sponsors to bring you their marketing message and information about their products and services by publishing their information or links within our site.

We also allow third parties to provide funding for WebMD to independently create information about certain topics within a specified health category. We have listed the differences between these two types of content below and the steps we take to help you understand what the labels mean.

• •  How to Identify Sponsored or Sponsor Influenced Content
• •  How to Identify WebMD Content that is Funded by a Third Party

When You See "Sponsor" on WebMD

To help make sure you understand that this category of content is not WebMD"s content, we always label it as "Sponsored". Sponsored content on WebMD is content that has been created by, provided by, or influenced by the named sponsor. While "Sponsored" content is subject to WebMD's Advertising Policy, it is not subject to WebMD's Editorial Policy. The Sponsor is responsible for the accuracy and objectivity of Sponsored content. WebMD takes meaningful steps to help ensure that you will not confuse Sponsored content (content that is influenced by the named sponsor) with content that is original WebMD content and is governed by WebMD's Editorial Policy, including WebMD Features, WebMD Health News, and other original WebMD editorial content.

For Sponsored content on WebMD, you will find that:

• • All content on WebMD that is created, influenced, or provided by a sponsor is identified with the label "Sponsored by" or "From Our Sponsor."

• • At the top of each Sponsored page, we place descriptive text to inform you that the content on the page is created, influenced, or provided by the sponsor and is under the named sponsor's sole editorial control.

• • You are always informed that content originates from a sponsor before you click to access it, so you are always making an informed decision to view it. Links to this type of content are always identified with distinctive coloring, will carry the "Sponsor" label, and will carry the sponsor's name or logo.

• • Within the sponsor's content, there may be links to the sponsor's web site.
• • When links to the sponsor's web site are included in the sponsored pages, WebMD takes meaningful steps to make sure you know that you are visiting another web site. We describe this in more detail in the WebMD Privacy Policy.
• • The sponsored content carries the copyright of the named sponsor or the rightful copyright owner.
• • The sponsored content includes a descriptive line at the end of the content noting that WebMD does not endorse any specific product, service, or treatment.

When Third Parties Fund the Cost of WebMD Editorial Content

In addition to sponsored content, there are times that third parties offer to provide funding for the creation of WebMD original content without having any influence over it. By allowing the funding of original WebMD editorial content, we can bring you even more great, award-winning information to help you manage your health or improve make healthy changes to your lifestyle.

In these instances, you will find:

• • We place descriptive text at the top of the page to let you know that WebMD created or selected the content without influence from the company who funded the costs associated with the development and production of it.
• • At the top of each page created with funding from a third-party source, we place descriptive text to inform you that the content on the page is created by WebMD under WebMD's sole editorial control.
• • You will generally see the words "funded by" followed by the name of the company who funded the content with a hyper link to the definition of "funded by".

• • In some instances, we will also use one of the following three (3) additional labels to let you know that the content was funded by the named third party
  • •  Brought to you by [Name of third party]
  • •  Support provided by [Name of third party]
  • •  Made possible by a Grant from [Name of third party]

It is important to note that while Sponsors on WebMD are subject to our Advertising Policy, and where appropriate, they must also comply with guidelines from regulatory agencies such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Last Updated: August 2007

©2007 WebMD, Inc. All rights reserved.