I thought this seemed weird today as from multiple news sources they kept talking about how a random company has had explosive growth of sort and what sort of gave it away was that it read like a press release as it was mostly the company saying how great they were versus each news outlet asking questions and showing their view of the company. Therefore, it was highly probable that they paid for this media exposure which is definitely a thing.
It makes you think as many times people spend thousands of dollars on a traditional ad in hopes to get more attention. But would you think investing money to be published by the news media would add more credibility? Because there are a lot of people who wouldn’t notice that they are paid ads and therefore people would take the company more seriously as they think they are reading literally the news and not an ad where reporters are supposed to do due diligence on the subjects.
In some ways it reminds me of individuals that spend a lot of money to literally have a company give them an award so that they can advertise they are an award winning entrepreneur which actually helps for many because people don’t often actually research what the award was. The interesting ways people spend money to get a competitive advantage, I guess.