SEOsmart and its companies compliance requirements for affiliate marketing

The following requirements are mandatory for all affiliate marketing promoting or related to SEOsmart and its companies products and services, and as such are deemed to be incorporated into the agreement with Ad Network.
Ad Network must ensure that all affiliates involved in the promotion of SEOsmart and its companies services are aware of and adhere to these requirements.
Further details and agreed exceptions may be listed in the relevant Insertion Order (IO).

1. Use of creative material

All banners, landing pages or other creative material must be approved by SEOsmart and its companies prior to use. SEOsmart and its companies must approve all such material in writing, for instance by email, prior to it going live, and once approved the promotional material must not be changed unless explicit written approval is granted in writing by SEOsmart and its companies. Creative provided by or approved by SEOsmart and its companies is not to be added to, deleted from, altered, obscured or contradicted by other aspects of the user experience.

2. Prohibited activities

  • Typosquatting, clickjacking, likejacking, using hacked sites, sites offering illegal or dubious software;
  • Any association with stolen, libellous or discriminatory content or illegal activity;
  • Anything which is misleading, including creating a false sense of urgency (e.g. countdown clocks, statements of limited availability) or making promises that cannot be delivered;
  • Social media advertising where new consumers lose sight of the cost of the service;
  • Interfering with presentation of the price of the service, key terms such as subscription or implying that the service is free;
  • Unsolicited email, SMS or other messaging;
  • Collecting mobile number or other personal information from the consumer without their consent; Any viruses, malware, spyware or other malicious or harmful code;
  • iFraming of our sites or exposing an API to third parties; and
  • Using brand names of not affiliated third party companies in promotional material

3. Activities requiring approval

  • Content locking / unlocking. Approval criteria will include:
  1. It is clear at the start of the process that a purchase will be necessary
  2. The content is genuinely unlocked after the purchase
  3. There is a clear route back to the unlocked content after the purchase
  • Association with porn or violent material;
  • Promotions or products that will be particularly attractive to children;
  • Promotions to a vulnerable group;
  • Social media advertising;
  • Voucher and incentives schemes including instant wins. Approval criteria will include:
  1. It is clear upfront whether a purchase will be necessary
  2. If no purchase is necessary, the route to receive the incentive is clear
  3. There is no confusion as to what is free and what incurs a charge
  4. The incentive given or the chance to win is real and not exaggerated. In-app advertising Toolbars and adware

4. Description of marketing techniques

Approval must be sought and received in writing for each marketing technique used. The IO will describe the full extent of marketing channels and techniques which have been approved for any given promotion..

  • Display advertising including text, images (including banners) and videos;
  • Paid search results. SEO tuned landing pages;
  • Pop-overs, pop-unders and back-button advertising;
  • Pre-landers; and
  • Email, SMS or other messaging to opted-in lists.

5. Traffic inflation

Impressions, clicks and sessions are not to be artificially inflated or generated and must derive solely from live consumers. Use of robots is forbidden..

6. Fraud, non-compliance and failure to adhere to these requirements

If fraud is suspected then affected revenue will be withheld, and the level of revenue that is withheld will depend on the lowest level of granularity available. It might be all the revenue of one affiliate or it might be all revenue associated with one traffic source of one affiliate.
If suspected illegal activity is being committed by a particular affiliate, then the affiliate will not be paid in line with legal and regulatory rules.
The affiliate network is expected to cooperate when fraud is suspected, ultimately identifying the specific affiliate behind the fraud. Suspected fraud will be reported to the relevant authorities such as the police or other enforcement bodies.

7. Referrers

The affiliate network must pass non-cloaked referrers, in order to allow systematic checks to be performed on traffic sources.
The affiliate network shall pass the publisher ID (and sub IDs where applicable) so the traffic source can be analyzed separately..

8. Payment terms

Payment terms which are shorter than one month do not allow for action to be taken in case of problems identified as per the requirements above. Therefore, shorter payment terms will only be acceptable when approved and agreed in writing between the parties.