Quality Guidelines

as of March 19, 2020

The quality and legal compliance of Advertisements and Advertising Spaces on the TONIC. platform is of crucial importance for Team Internet. The basic quality and compliance requirements both for Advertisers and Publishers are defined in these Quality Guidelines.

These Quality shall be part of and incorporated into all agreements between Team Internet and Advertisers/Publishers, as amended from time to time in their respective then-current version.

Team Internet may make amendments to these Quality Guidelines where these become necessary due to changed circumstances (e.g. changes in legislation or court jurisprudence) and are not unreasonable to the Advertiser/Publisher. Advertisers/Publishers shall be notified of any new versions of these Quality Guidelines by electronic means (via the Platform) in a timely manner before the new version takes effect. In certain cases, a new version must take immediate effect. Advertisers/Publishers shall be entitled to object to a new version of these Quality Guidelines. An objection is deemed to constitute a notice of termination of the agreement with immediate effect. A usage of the Platform shall not be permissible after such an objection. Where the Advertiser/Publisher does not object, the new version is deemed to have been accepted.

A. Advertiser Quality Guidelines

  1. Advertisements must comply with all applicable laws and regulations and must not infringe and third-party rights.
  2. The Advertiser hereby undertakes that it shall not itself do or allow any third party to do the following:
    1. open pop-ups that cannot be closed by a click without this causing one or more pop-ups to be opened;
    2. open more than one pop-up when opening or leaving a page;
    3. use any mechanism preventing the user from closing pop-ups or the browser window;
    4. imitate system error reports;
    5. start downloads/installation without User interaction;
    6. launch alarm sounds that could entail stress to the User;
  3. The Advertiser shall not upload Advertisements and/or direct traffic to landing pages that contain the following contents and/or mechanisms:
    1. Explicit and/or illegal content;
    2. Parked domains with Google advertisement or websites with Google Ads, except where this has been expressly consented to by Google;
    3. Gambling (such as games involving wagers of money, poker, casino etc.);
    4. Glorification of violence and/or hate and/or depictions thereof;
    5. Malware, scareware, phishing;
    6. Misleading of Users; including but not limited to usage of 3rd party trademarks, logos, pictures or videos without the consent of the rights owner
    7. Deceiving a User into believing that he has a virus on his device and needs to call a specific telephone number or to interact in some other way (“Tech Support”);
    8. Paid subscriptions/chargeable registrations without clearly indicating the price;
    9. Toolbars, downloads with toolbars, false software updates;
    10. Downloads that do not come from an official app store (such as Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc.);
    11. Sale of illegal goods and of alcohol, tobacco, prescription medication, weapons, ammunition etc.);
    12. Any kind of pharmaceutical products or pills;
    13. Cookie dropping;
    14. Pop up loops that can’t be closed by the user;
    15. All adult pages must respect German law regarding FSK 16 content (the media age rating system used in Germany that prohibits any material not suitable to persons below an age of 16 years – as an international guide, this is comparable in content to that of PG 15 in the United Kingdom and a stricter version of the USA R rating, such rating also being applicable to games, cartoons and comic content; naked sexual poses with visible genitalia and sexual intercourse are therefore forbidden), erotic content which has the German rating FSK 18 is forbidden;
    16. Advertising erotic content on Advertising Spaces which are not defined as erotic spaces; and/or
    17. Content which is illegal, which advertises illegal products, services or matters, and/or content violating provisions of law, infringing on personality rights, trademark rights, third-party intellectual property rights and/or violating public morals.
  4. Where the Advertiser provides email Advertisements or Advertisements for any other direct marketing channels (including, but not limited to, social media messaging systems etc.), the Advertiser shall comply with any applicable direct marketing laws regulations and industry best practice guidelines, including, but not limited to , the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (“Can-Spam”), the Canada Anti-Spam Legislation (“CASL”), the California Anti-Spam Act (“California Anti Spam Act”), the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”), the Federal Trade Commission Act (“FTC ACT”) and all FTC guidelines.
  5. The Advertiser may not make any arrangements to present Team Internet with other Advertisements, tracking URLs or landing pages than are presented to other Users. So-called “cloaking” is absolutely prohibited. The Advertiser must present each User with the same Advertisement and landing page and, in so doing, may only adapt the landing page in respect of the User’s language. The remainder of the layout must be retained.

B. Publisher Quality Guidelines

  1. The Publisher must create informative and substantively correct Advertising Spaces and may not utilise any techniques to manipulate search engines (such as multiple domains, sub-domains, lists with the same and/or uninformative content, cloaking, doorway pages, etc.)
  2. The Publisher shall ensure that filters are installed on his Advertising Spaces which will prevent non-human visitors (e.g. bots, spiders, Spam Traffic), from being sent to the Advertiser’s Advertisements and shall demonstrate these filters to Team Internet upon request.
  3. The Publisher hereby undertakes that he himself shall neither intentionally nor negligently do the following or permit any third party to do so:
    1. Fully or partially modify and/or conceal Advertisements, and/or prevent the correct and complete display of an Advertisement, or break up the correct and complete display thereof through the use of a frame;
    2. To load or display Advertisements through a pop-up, pop-under, exit window or similar manner, except where the form of advertising (such as Pop) explicitly permits this;
    3. To »crawl«, »spider«, index, »cache« or otherwise cause automated downloading of Advertisements;
    4. To automatically generate Traffic or conversions;
    5. To modify the Advertiser’s landing pages (e.g. to use search queries to make changes to the landing page URL or the like);
    6. Absent a special waiver from Team Internet, to monetise Advertising Space which has no content;
    7. Absent a special waiver from Team Internet, to monetise Advertising Space which would be classified as erotic (German movie rating 16);
    8. To monetise Advertising Space containing the following:
      1. Violence and/or hate;
      2. Sale of illegal goods (including, but not limited to, alcohol, tobacco, prescription medication, weapons, ammunition, etc.);
      3. To create incentives for Users, whether for consideration or gratuitously, to click on Advertisements, to complete forms, to perform searches, to surf websites, to read emails and the like ("Incentivised Traffic”);
      4. Cookie dropping; and/or
      5. Content which is illegal, which advertises illegal items, and/or content violating applicable law, infringing on personality rights, trademark rights, third party intellectual property rights and/or violating public morals.
  4. Website Advertising Space
    1. Where banners, pop-ups, text displays or other advertising is incorporated on a website, the publisher must ensure that no artificial Traffic is directed to the page. This includes, but is not limited to, modifying User settings, changing homepages, launching unrequested downloads or viruses.
    2. Advertisements may not be incorporated onto a website in a manner which confuses the User by misleading headings, images or other content, as a result of which he does not recognise the advertising as such.
    3. Advertisements should be labelled with “sponsored links”, “ads”, or “Advertisements”.
  5. Zero-Click Advertising Space
    1. Zero-Click Advertising Spaces are a special form of advertising. They are only available to Publishers with large levels of domain or direct navigation Traffic and require a Feed Integration.
    2. The Publisher must ensure that no artificial Traffic is sent to domains monetised via Zero-Click.
    3. The Publisher must ensure that the match of ad type (PPR, PPC, POP, EMAIL, etc.) and Traffic category (adult, non-adult) are 100% correct.
    4. The Publisher must ensure that key words which are sent reflect the intention of the User.
  6. The Publisher may not make any arrangements to present Team Internet with other Advertising Spaces than are presented to other Users. So-called “cloaking” is absolutely prohibited on all Advertising Spaces. The Publisher must present each User with the same Advertising Space and, in so doing, may only adapt the Advertising Spaces to take account of the User’s language. The remainder of the layout must be retained.
  7. Publishers may be required to accept additional guidelines via the Platform, e.g. the Google Referral Guidelines. Such additional guidelines shall prevail to these Publisher Quality Guidelines in case of any conflicts.