Disclosing material connections between brands and reviewers
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When a reviewer has received free product, payment, or any other benefit from a brand they are writing about, that connection is material to how a reader should weigh their stated opinion, and hiding it quietly removes the reader's ability to judge the review for themselves.
Disclosure does not need to be apologetic or buried deep in fine print somewhere hard to find. A brief, plainly worded note placed near the review is usually enough, and audiences generally respond better to honesty than to the later discovery of a connection left unmentioned entirely.
Brands sometimes resist encouraging clear disclosure, worried it will weaken a review's persuasive force with readers, yet the opposite tends to be true over time, since a disclosed relationship read as generally positive can carry more credibility than an undisclosed one eventually exposed by someone else.
The real standard is not whether the connection actually influenced the opinion at all. It is simply whether a reasonable reader would want to know about it before forming their own view of the product, especially when several versions of the same story are circulating.