The three attributes
They are hints about the nature of a link, not punishments. Using the right one is how you stay compliant while still getting the placement.
- rel="sponsored" — the link was paid for, in money or in kind. This is the correct attribute for an advertisement or a sponsored directory slot.
- rel="nofollow" — the original catch-all. Still valid, and commonly used together with sponsored for belt-and-braces.
- rel="ugc" — user-generated content, like a forum post or a comment. Not what a paid placement is.
Why a publisher who nofollows your paid link is doing you a favour
If a directory sells you a followed paid link, both sides are in breach: the seller for selling ranking signals and the buyer for buying them. When the seller gets devalued — and that is the endgame for a site whose model is selling links — your link loses whatever value it had, and your profile now contains a footprint pointing at a known link seller.
A sponsored, nofollowed placement cannot do that to you. It delivers the thing it promised, which is people, and it leaves no liability behind.
What this means for disclosure
The link attribute is the search-engine half. The other half is the human one: a reader should be able to tell a paid placement from an editorial one before they click, at the point of the link rather than buried in a footer. That is what disclosure rules in most jurisdictions are driving at, and it is also just decent.
On this directory both halves are handled in one place — paid slots are labelled Sponsored on the card itself, and every outbound link carries rel="sponsored nofollow" whether it was paid for or not.