The following policies describe Bucksens's ad-quality standards, in order to provide guidance on the appropriateness of the content and behaviour of ads delivered through our DSP.
Because different supply partners have different policies, Bucksense has a centralized set of rules incorporated into our system, to ensure that users have a positive user experience with creatives.
THESE POLICIES DO NOT REPLACE THE BUCKSENSE TERMS OF USE AGREEMENT OR THE TERMS OF YOUR INSERTION ORDER, THEY ARE IN ADDITION TO THOSE TERMS.
This document is not meant to be all encompassing and we reserve the right to change or modify any portion of these policies at any time without notice.
Advertisers have a responsibility to make sure that their ad units and landing pages adhere to these policies and do not contain any of the following prohibited categories. Advertisers should contact our ad quality team at creativeaudit@bucksense.com for any ad quality related questions and before submitting any restricted content.
Creatives associated with any activity designed to sell advertising under fraudulent pretenses, including but not limited to non-human traffic, tag hijacking, hidden ads, domain spoofing, cookie stuffing, generating fake impressions or clicks, reselling of ads under false pretenses, etc.
Creatives that depict, contain or provide access to pornography, nudity, obscenity, and other adult or risqué material.
Creatives that contain or provide access to any files that execute or download software without intentional user interaction. Clicking on an ad must also not initiate a download of any type of file.
The promotion of products or services that distribute or facilitate access to materials that infringe upon the copyright of others globally is prohibited.
Counterfeit goods contain a company or business name, logo, or other mark that is identical to, or substantially indistinguishable from, the registered trademark of another. Counterfeit goods attempt to deceive consumers into believing the counterfeit is a genuine product of the brand owner, or to represent themselves as faux, replicas or imitations of the genuine product.
Creatives that consistently take more than two seconds to initiate the user ad experience.
The sale or promotion of products obtained or made from endangered, threatened or protected species, as well as the sale of such species, is prohibited globally on Bucksense.
Creatives that depict, contain or provide access to violent content or content that glorifies human suffering, death, self-harm, violence against animals, or contains graphic or violent images.
Creatives that depict, contain or provide access to offers that charge for government forms or services that are available for a lesser charge or free from the government.
Creatives featuring or promoting the sale of illegal drugs, pharmaceuticals or drug paraphernalia. As marijuana remains illegal under United States federal law, this Creative Policy prohibits creatives featuring or promoting the sale of marijuana, even in those states where marijuana use is permitted under state law.
All advertising, as well as the products and services being advertised, must clearly comply with all applicable laws and regulations. Products with questionable legality and compliance will be reviewed conservatively.
Creatives that disrupt the user’s ability to navigate their experience, e.g., by preventing a user from leaving a page by opening modal dialogs or pop-up windows.
Creatives that contain, install, links to, or prompts the download of any malware, Trojan horse, virus, or any other malicious code.
Creatives that attempt to trick or deceive a user into taking some action (e.g., “click bait” creatives, creatives that mimic user interface elements, creatives that display fake errors or warnings, such as warnings about viruses, missing codecs, or corrupt disks, etc.) or markets false or unrealistic promises such as extreme weight loss, anti-aging, etc.
Accurate and clear content: Creatives should be of high editorial quality. Those which are gimmicky, misleading, or of low editorial quality are prohibited.
Bucksense prohibits the promotion of products or services that distribute or facilitate access to materials that infringe the copyright of others globally.
Creatives that depict, contain, or provide access to content that incites violence or prejudicial action towards a protected individual or group; or content that disparages or intimidates an individual or group.
Creatives should not depict, contain, or provide access to material that is damaging to the reputation of another.
Do not include language in creatives that could offend or shock users.
The sale or promotion of spyware or illegal hacking is prohibited globally on Bucksense.
Bucksense prohibits the promotion of tobacco brands and the online and offline sale of tobacco and tobacco accessories globally.
Creatives that feature the sale of, or instructions on how to create, bombs, guns, firearms, ammunition or other weapons.
Ads that promote alcoholic beverages are restricted by region and may only be targeted to users that (i) reside in a jurisdiction where alcohol advertising is permitted, and (ii) are of the legal age to purchase alcohol within that jurisdiction. Alcohol-related Ads must not be designed, or appear to be designed, to appeal to underage purchasers.
Gambling Ads may be targeted to users in jurisdictions where such ads are not prohibited so long as you comply with the following requirements: You and (if you are an advertising agency), the end advertiser present all required licenses, permits, registrations, waivers, consents or other governmental approvals to operate in the jurisdictions in which the gambling ad is served and in any other jurisdictions in which you and the advertiser operate. You and (if you are an advertising agency), the end advertiser are in compliance with and agree to remain in compliance with all applicable laws and the terms of all applicable licenses.
Programmatic fraud and malicious behaviour is not tolerated by Bucksense. Bucksense is dedicated towards providing high quality standards for our customers, taking care of publisher spaces and ensuring user safety. Bucksense closely monitors all our clients steps, from account creation, to creative approval to the launch and execution of campaigns. We also carefully vet our partners by running multiple tests before integration.
Bucksense takes the following steps to fight malicious players and ensure ad compliance:
Bucksense likes to know our customers, their products and their goals so that we can help them to achieve their objectives better. We also want to ensure that there is no inappropriate behavior in what they do or plan to do. For this reason, every new account created in our console is assigned an Account Manager who schedules an interview (even if the client is just interested in the self serve use of the platform). This enables the account manager to learn more about the advertiser and evaluate their products and the ways in which they intend promote them (creatives, destination urls etc). If the account manager identifies a potentially malicious advertiser they will be immediately blocked and the account will be deleted. Only when an advertiser is considered ‘safe’, can they start to use the console.
The Bucksense ad quality team checks all creatives and campaigns in line with our technology partner; The Media Trust. All items (banners, ad tags, destination urls etc) that an advertiser has set up in the console are continuously scanned and verified.
For campaigns using standard creatives and native ads, our verification team ensures that all creatives meet the ad-quality standard. They run Live Tests using real devices (smartphones, tablets, PCs) to reproduce the end user’s experience. Each creative needs to be approved before being used in a campaign.
The Media Trust (TMT) evaluates and then approves or rejects all ad tags and video vasts before campaign launch. They continue to monitor and scan the ad tags and video vasts for the campaign duration, to make sure everything remains compliant. This is to ensure that all the creatives uploaded in the console meet both the requirements of our supply partners, and the guidelines of the ad exchanges that we partner with. To make the work easier for our customers, we have created a set of Advertising Guidelines that list the different policies of our ad exchanges and can be used as a reference before creating any type of ad.
Once a campaign has been approved by our ad quality team, it can begin running traffic. Each campaign gets continuously scanned and analyzed through an automated process that checks it before, during and after the launch. If The Media Trust detects a potential breach, it will alert Bucksense and that campaign will be automatically blocked!
Every time there is an alert, the potentially malicious campaign is automatically stopped so that Bucksense can perform the appropriate assessments. Our ad fraud team will discuss the breech with the related advertiser. If the violation is assessed as severe (potentially fraudulent or malicious), or, if the scan detects a non compliant activity, the account is suspended and all related campaigns are blocked. If a breach is suspected, but there is no evidence of compliant activities, we apply a ‘2 strike policy’ for that advertiser. If the violation occurs again we block the account.