Sitewide links from blogs we sponsor - A Bad Thing?

[Coraltoes77]

We sponsor a few blogs in our niche. As part of the sponsorship, they include an advert on the RHS or LHS of the blog page.  Links are dofollow and are sitewide.

Should I be concerned?  Should I be asking for a nofollow instead, if possible?

I've recently disavowed links and am waiting to see what happens with this - hopefully there's a Penguin update soon - but I wondered if the blog links were part of the problem.

[GPainter]

Yes it is bad, better would be to no follow all the links except the home page (which tends to have the best authority).

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Matt Cutts (from Google) actually said on video that links like these are the sort of links that they don't want to see from sites. A link should have a reason to be there and Google's algorithms will have ways to determine which these are.

You might also want to watch this new video from Matt on paid links.

-Andy

[Coraltoes77]

Thanks both.