Hah reminds me of back around turn of the century, my company - for some reason - had a subscription to PC World. I started to notice a trend and did an experiment by following and charting two things: their product reviews/ratings, and their advertising.

Not all that many major brands back in that day so there would be an edition of the mag where multiple ads could be found in one issue, from the same company.

Anyway, it turned out that in the reviews of Graphics Controllers, Modems and other peripherals, every month - consistently - the winning pick among the products reviewed just happened to be the brand that spent the most on advertising in that issue! I tracked it across around 6-7 issues, and you’d see literally the same group of products sometimes, and yet different “winners” different months haha. What a joke.