BidSwitch

Buy-Side and Sell-Side Policies

Last updated: 20 February 2024

These Buy-side and Sell-side policies apply to BidSwitch partners that use the BidSwitch Platform. BidSwitch partners that do not comply with these policies may have their access to the BidSwitch Platform suspended temporarily or permanently.

Any defined terms set out in your agreement with BidSwitch relating to your use of the BidSwitch Platform shall apply to these BidSwitch Policies.

BidSwitch reserves the right to amend these policies from time to time by giving notice of this to you in writing and your continued use of the BidSwitch Platform after such notification shall constitute your deemed acceptance.

Buy-side Policies

If you use the BidSwitch Platform to buy media or otherwise make advertising available, you must ensure that all advertising you make available complies at all times with the BidSwitch Buy-side Policies set out below. Failure to comply with these Buy-side Policies may lead to immediate suspension of your connection to the BidSwitch Platform.

Nota Bene:  BidSwitch Partners must ensure compliance with Criteo’s advertising guidelines at all times.

 

  1. All advertising must comply with all applicable privacy laws, rules, regulations, and sanctioned programs, including without limitation all applicable intellectual property rights of any third party and Internet advertising industry guidelines including the self-regulatory principles and code of conduct of the Network Advertising Initiative, the Interactive Advertising Bureau, and the Digital Advertising Alliance.
  2. Advertising must not endanger the security of the BidSwitch Platform or its affiliated platforms or their users, or make a call to a Service which endangers the security of the BidSwitch Platform or its affiliated platforms or their users.
  3. Advertiser agrees to:
    • not resell ad units, except with explicit publisher approval;
    • serve an ad unit to the publisher with the correct technical guidelines and requirements for said publisher ad unit, except with explicit publisher and advertiser approval.
  4. Advertising must not contain any of the following:
    • content that is illegal, promotes illegal activity, or infringes upon the legal rights of others, unless explicitly written otherwise in Section 5 of these Policies. This includes but is not limited to the unauthorized use of copyrighted material;
    • pornographic, adult, or mature content;
    • violent content;
    • content related to racial intolerance or advocacy against any individual, group, or organization;
    • hacking/cracking content;
    • drugs both illicit and recreational, defined as substances that alter mental state or induce “highs,” as well as ads for products or services marketed as facilitating drug use, unless explicitly written otherwise in Section 5 of these Policies. Examples include cocaine, heroin, or other illegal opioids.
    • content relating to the sale of prescription drugs;
    • auto-play audio elements;
    • pop-up or pop-under content;
    • shaking or blurry images;
    • advertising that is not within the specified ad unit size parameters;
    • multiple advertising units per advertising slot; or
    • auto-refresh advertising units.
  5. You must opt in to trade in ‘Sensitive Categories.’ Sensitive Categories are advertising categories that contain content that is legally permissible only in certain jurisdictions and/or circumstances and/or which may be difficult for a publisher to accommodate due to the sensitive nature of the ad content. To opt in to Sensitive Categories, please reach out to your Account Manager. You may also be required to agree to certain additional conditions relating to such Sensitive Categories. Sensitive Categories for Ads include the following:
    • Gambling or casino-related content, including but not limited to online or offline gambling or betting:
      • “Online gambling” is defined as promotion of online, real-money gambling for money and/or ‘monies worth’, as well as the promotion of sites that contain or link to content relating to online gambling;
      • “Offline gambling” is defined as promotion of physical, real-money gambling for money and/or ‘monies worth’, activity or establishments;
      • “Online non-casino games” is defined as any internet-based game where money or other items of value are paid or wagered, in exchange for the opportunity to win real money or prizes based on the outcome of games, such as fantasy sports, online tournaments, or video games played for money or prizes.
    • Content for sale of alcohol, including beer, wine and liquor.
    • Content relating to the sale of tobacco or tobacco-related products, including but not limited to electronic cigarettes and vapes, pipes, bongs, cigarettes, cigars or other related matters;
      • Advertising clearly intended for smoking cessation is allowed. Electronic cigarettes and chewing tobacco cannot be advertised even when marketed as smoking cessation. Media buyers must accurately declare the applicable advertising category for the creative(s) that they are using in a bid response.
    • Content relating to cannabis or cannabis-related products.
  6. All advertising must not:
    • fraudulently or misleadingly induce a user to click on an Ad;
    • change user preferences or initiate downloads without the user’s explicit consent;
    • distribute malware or redirect users to unwanted websites, including malware, or contain pop-ups or pop-unders that interfere with site navigation; or
    • contain fraudulent methods to inflate or arbitrage ad impressions, including advertising stacking or calling other advertising units at run time.
  7. All advertising must:
    • comply with NAI/IAB/AAAA guidelines for spam; and
    • have explicit authorized permission from an advertiser or agent to use specified ad content.
  8. All advertising should:
    • comply with the Better Ads Standards for ad experiences as defined by the Coalition for Better Ads;
  9. Cookie Stuffing: The practice of capturing cookies with the intent of inserting them into a browser cache or http transaction to pretend a legitimate user has visited either an advertiser domain or a publisher domain, is prohibited on the BidSwitch Platform.
  10. ID Bridging and ID Stuffing: USER ID manipulation of any kind to gain an unfair advantage in trading is prohibited:
    • ID Stuffing, or any form of substitution, replacement, overwriting, manipulation, rotation, or misrepresentation of a USER ID, is strictly prohibited on the BidSwitch Platform.
    • Identity Bridging, or the act of using probabilistic methods to approximate a USER ID in a cookieless environment by linking to their identity in an environment with cookies via any type of signals, is prohibited on the BidSwitch Platform unless given express permission by BidSwitch and in line with industry standards (such as IAB specifications).
    • BidSwitch’s stance on ID Provenance can be found here.
  11. You agree to observe BidSwitch’s online technical specifications relating to the use of the BidSwitch Platform (available at http://docs.bidswitch.com as updated by BidSwitch and advised to you from time to time).

 

Sell-side Policies

If you use the BidSwitch Platform to sell media, you must ensure that all media you make available through the BidSwitch Platform complies at all times with the BidSwitch Sell-side Policies set out below. Failure to comply with these Sell-side Policies may lead to immediate suspension of your connection to the BidSwitch Platform.

Nota Bene:  BidSwitch Partners must ensure compliance with Criteo’s supply partner guidelines at all times.

 

  1. You must comply with all applicable privacy laws, rules, regulations, and sanctioned programs, including without limitation applicable intellectual property rights of any third party and Internet advertising industry guidelines including the self-regulatory principles/code of conduct of the Network Advertising Initiative, the Interactive Advertising Bureau, and the Digital Advertising Alliance.
  2. You must ensure that proper consent is acquired prior to collecting, using, or disclosing personal information from children 13 or younger.
    • Such consent must be declared to BidSwitch via the regs object.
    • Documentation on the regs object can be found here.
    • If you believe a user viewing your website is 13 or younger, you must mark the respective request(s) sent to BidSwitch as coppa=1
    • If you deem your Site or content of the Site to be oriented towards children 13 or younger, you must declare ALL requests sent to BidSwitch as coppa=1
  3. The Site and content of the Site must not endanger the security of the BidSwitch Platform or its users;
  4. Sites that display Ads must not contain any of the following:
    • content that is illegal, promotes illegal activity, or infringes on the legal rights of others. This includes but is not limited to content containing child pornography and unauthorized use of copyrighted material;
    • pornographic, adult, or mature content;
    • violent content;
    • content related to racial intolerance or advocacy against any individual, group, or organization;
    • hacking/cracking content;
    • drugs both illicit and recreational, defined as substances that alter mental state or induce “highs,” as well as ads for products or services marketed as facilitating drug use, unless explicitly written otherwise in Section 5 of these Policies. Examples include cocaine, heroin, or other illegal opioids.
    • sale of tobacco or tobacco-related products, including but not limited to electronic cigarettes and vapes, pipes, bongs, cigarettes, cigars, etc.;
      • Advertising clearly intended for smoking cessation is allowed. Electronic cigarettes and chewing tobacco cannot be advertised even when marketed as smoking cessation.
    • sale of prescription drugs;
    • sale of weapons or ammunition, including by not limited to firearms, firearm components, fighting knives, or stun guns.
  5. You must opt in to trade in ‘Sensitive Categories.’ Sensitive Categories are advertising categories that contain content that is legally permissible only in certain jurisdictions and/or circumstances and/or which may be difficult for a publisher to accommodate due to the sensitive nature of the ad content. To opt in to Sensitive Categories, please reach out to your Account Manager. You may also be required to agree to certain additional conditions relating to such Sensitive Categories. Sensitive Categories for Ads include the following:
    • Gambling or casino-related content, including but not limited to online or offline gambling or betting:
      • “Online gambling” is defined as promotion of online, real-money gambling for money and/or ‘monies worth’, as well as the promotion of sites that contain or link to content relating to online gambling;
      • “Offline gambling” is defined as promotion of physical, real-money gambling for money and/or ‘monies worth’, activity or establishments;
      • “Online non-casino games” is defined as any internet-based game where money or other items of value are paid or wagered, in exchange for the opportunity to win real money or prizes based on the outcome of games, such as fantasy sports, online tournaments, or video games played for money or prizes.
    • Content for sale of alcohol, including beer, wine and liquor.
    • Content relating to the sale of tobacco or tobacco-related products, including but not limited to electronic cigarettes and vapes, pipes, bongs, cigarettes, cigars or other related matters;
      • Advertising clearly intended for smoking cessation is allowed. Electronic cigarettes and chewing tobacco cannot be advertised even when marketed as smoking cessation. Media buyers must accurately declare the applicable advertising category for the creative(s) that they are using in a bid response.
      • Content relating to cannabis or cannabis-related products.
  6. You must not distribute traffic where you are not listed as an authorized seller (either DIRECT or RESELLER) in the publisher’s ads.txt file.
  7. Sites must not:
    • use artificial means to inflate impressions, conversions and/or clicks, including but not limited to click fraud or any other method of fraudulent activity.
    • induce clicks from users or third parties by (i) offering compensation or other incentives to click on the ad; (ii) formatting or labelling the ads or the surrounding content so as to trigger inadvertent click of the ads; or (iii) otherwise soliciting the user to click the ad;
    • provide inventory from systems that overlay ad space on a given site without express permission of the site owner;
    • change user preferences or initiate downloads without the user’s explicit consent; or
    • distribute malware or redirect users to unwanted websites, including malware, or contain pop-ups or pop-unders that interfere with site navigation.
  8. Sites must:
    • comply with NAI/IAB/AAAA guidelines for spam;
    • have explicit authorized permission from publishers to place ad content within the publisher’s page;
    • obtain express (i.e. opt-in) consent from end users;
    • ensure that all applicable privacy policies disclose all applicable information including the collection, processing, or disclosure;
    • have permission and disclose to user that it collects any user data, including but not limited to any location data that is collected, processed, or which identifies or can be used to infer an end user’s precise geographic location, such as GPS, Wi-Fi or mobile cell tower data; and
    • provide accurate domain information in calls to the Services.
  9. Sites should:
    • comply with the Better Ads Standards for ad experiences as defined by the Coalition for Better Ads;
  10. Video inventory coming from a site is allowed only when the site (i) owns the video player, (ii) owns the video content, or (iii) holds exclusive sales rights to the video content.
  11. Video inventory coming from a site must provide in its calls accurate information in the description URL fields and any other required parameters for each ad unit.
  12. Interaction of Ad with Video Player. Once BidSwitch has returned an ad in response to a request from a publisher, the ad must be displayed until (i) the ad itself finishes playing; (ii) the user skips or closes the ad; or (iii) the end user navigates away from the video content by, for example, closing the browser window with the page displaying the video. Content playback must be paused when a user clicks on an ad.
  13. Video Ad Placement. Only one video ad may be displayed within the video player at any given time. You may not (i) obscure, hide, or remove any elements of the ad units, (ii) place the ad such that it obstructs the video player’s play, pause, volume or any other controls, or (iii) hard-code the ads into the content stream.
  14. Cookie Stuffing: The practice of capturing cookies with the intent of inserting them into a browser cache or http transaction to pretend a legitimate user has visited either an advertiser domain or a publisher domain, is prohibited on the BidSwitch Platform.
  15. ID Bridging and ID Stuffing: USER ID manipulation of any kind to gain an unfair advantage in trading is prohibited:
    • ID Stuffing, or any form of substitution, replacement, overwriting, manipulation, rotation, or misrepresentation of a USER ID, is strictly prohibited on the BidSwitch Platform.
    • Identity Bridging, or the act of using probabilistic methods to approximate a USER ID in a cookieless environment by linking to their identity in an environment with cookies via any type of signals, is prohibited on the BidSwitch Platform unless given express permission by BidSwitch and in line with industry standards (such as IAB specifications).
    • BidSwitch’s stance on ID Provenance can be found here.
  16. You agree to observe BidSwitch’s online technical specifications relating to the use of the BidSwitch Platform (available at http://docs.bidswitch.com as updated by BidSwitch and advised to you from time to time).