Advertising Supply Policy

Sovrn strives to provide buyers and sellers with a safe, transparent, and fair marketplace. The following outlines the basic standards Sovrn employs to vet publishers wishing to participate on Sovrn’s ad exchange. This does not constitute a full list and is meant only as a guide for publishers wanting to work with Sovrn.

Sovrn reserves the right to update this list at any time without notice and to refuse or revoke participation of any publisher based on its own judgment.

Content Guidelines

Content will be reviewed upon submission for approval, where all of the following review checks must be passed before being admitted to our Exchange.

• Safe for work
• Must not contain nudity
• Must not depict extreme acts of violence
• No hate speech, harassment, bullying, threats, or similar content that advocates for violence or discrimination against any group, organization, or individual
• Must not contain disinformation, misinformation, inflammatory politics, or promote adversarial narratives
• Must not contain misleading, unsubstantiated, or dangerous health claims, advice, or remedies
• Must not be an unpublished, under-developed, or parked domain
• Must not facilitate File-sharing or disseminate pirated or copyrighted material
• Must not promote cracks, warez, or black-hat hacking
• Content must be original and recent, content cannot be scraped or stolen from third party sites or apps
• Cannot promote the use or acquisition of illegal drugs, substances, firearms or other illegal items
• Must have text or a mix of written and image-based content; for clarity, site cannot be entirely image-based
• Written content must exhibit a level of effort sufficient to engage a reader base
• Posts must be created at regular intervals, contain a date and time-stamp, and list an author
• Must have a reasonable history of content and reader traffic
• Inventory must indicate user engagement
• Pages must contain more content than ads
• No unmoderated user generated content
• No unmoderated live streaming or chat sites
• Inventory must meet all requirements defined in the Master Service Agreement and/or the Exchange Terms of Service, including (but not limited to) requirements for a publicly posted Privacy Policy and ability to opt-out of targeting.
• Applications must not contain unmoderated user-generated content
• Utility applications are prohibited

Restricted Categories

• Gambling
• Cannabis & CBD
• Alcohol
• Pharmaceuticals
• Tobacco or Tobacco related products
• Adult oriented products and business related to dating lingerie, intimacy products and dating sites
• Inventory directed primarily or exclusively at readers under the age of 16 years
• Crypto currencies and crypto exchanges

Slideshows

Sites or pages that present content in a slideshow format that requires users to advance through the content by clicking on an image, icon, or link must comply with the following additional requirements.

• Each slideshow page may contain a maximum of 3 ad units, all of which must be positioned at or above the end of the slideshow content
• Slideshow pages may only load new ads when a user click initiates the loading of new content
• Auto-refresh is prohibited on slideshow pages
• Slideshows cannot be primarily image based
• The content of each slideshow page must substantially differ from previous slideshow pages

Implementation Guidelines

• Domains represented to Sovrn must be a website or web application meeting Traffic Guidelines (outlined below). For example, browser extensions will not be considered a site.
• Sites cannot initiate pop-ups, pop-unders or automatic redirects
• Sites cannot redirect users to unexpected, misleading, or malicious websites
• Sites cannot initiate automatic downloads
• Sites cannot distribute or install viruses, malware, or similar malicious code
• Publishers are prohibited from masking website URLs or otherwise obfuscating the sources of traffic
• The number of ad units, layout and format of ads, and refresh rate must remain constant, regardless of where a reader arrives on a page/content from
• Applications must have an active listing in a first-party/device manufacturer app store
• Applications must disclose advertising as part of their monetization strategy in their app store listing

Ad Inventory Guidelines

The following ad inventory guidelines are the criteria Sovrn uses to define our ad quality standards for inventory. All criteria must pass for inventory to be approved for serving ads, and inventory will be sampled and audited for continued compliance.

• Cannot contain more ads or ad space than content
• Cannot contain served ads deemed inappropriate by industry quality standards (e.g., ads containing pornography, promoting illegal services, or that lead to malware, phishing or enable crypto jacking)
• Ads cannot be hidden, stacked, obscured, altered, or overlapped
• No more than four (4) ads may be in view at a time
• Ads must be clearly separated from content and declared as ads when embedded in content, using the AdChoices icon
• Publishers are prohibited from editing, modifying, resizing, or otherwise changing ads
• Ads served in iframes must be fully visible to the reader
• Publishers are prohibited from using any misleading methods, icons, or images to induce or trick a reader to click on an advertisement
• Ads can only refresh when the ads have been in view for at least 30 seconds
• Site must be compliant with the Coalition for Better Ads’ Initial Better Ads Standards
• Inventory must be clearly marked as a video unit for video ads to be served
• Video content should maintain a reasonable balance between content and advertising (e.g., a 30 second ad should not accompany a video with less than 1:30 seconds of content)
• Video ads must:
  • Not contain auto-play audio for outstream videos
  • Play only one outstream video per page at a time
  • Not be served within display banner ad units (IBV)
  • Not loop or repeat, unless triggered by affirmative action by the reader
• Mobile app ads must:
  • Appear within the mobile app and cannot be displayed on the home screen, lockscreen, etc.
  • Only be served when the app is open and the reader has an opportunity to view the ads
  • Not override or rearrange the ad placements of any third party media
• CTV ads must:
  • Appear in-stream to content
  • Be limited to 5 or less ads in an in-stream block of ads
  • Be limited to one fourth(¼) the length in total of the content that is played
  • Not be served on devices located in public environments
  • Not be served with muted audio as the default

Ownership Guidelines

• Publisher must own or have direct control over the domain represented to Sovrn
• Use of black pool sales houses are prohibited
• In cases where an ads.txt file is present, the file must be on the site where ads are served, and the publisher or representative must list Sovrn’s seller ID in the ads.txt file (see our knowledge base for additional guidance)
• Resold CTV Inventory must have direct app-ads.txt authorization from the applications owner or a designated ‘INVENTORYPARTNER’
• Intermediaries must actively maintain a sellers.json file
• Inventory belonging to confidential upstream sellers is prohibited

Traffic Guidelines

• Audience must arrive at the domain primarily from organic sources
• The content of paid ads must accurately depict the content of the landing page the reader arrives on
• Publishers are prohibited from sourcing traffic to their site from pop-unders, pop-overs, malware, forced redirects, or other similar means
• Publishers are prohibited from incentivizing impressions, clicks, or requests
• Traffic must meet both current minimum quality standards set by Sovrn for fill rate, yield, viewability, etc. and minimum quality standards as measured by Sovrn’s third-party traffic monitoring.

Privacy and Individual Protected Characteristics

Sovrn prohibits the creation or extension of audiences or any use of its services that would introduce a targeting bias towards groups or populations defined by one or more of the following protected characteristics.

Promotion of content, products or services that targets one or several of the following non-exhaustive list of protected characteristics is prohibited unless expressly approved by Sovrn:

• Racial and/or ethnic origin
• Political opinions or affiliations
• Religious and/or philosophical beliefs
• Trade union membership
• Biometric data (when used to identify an individual)
• Mental or physical health conditions or diagnosis
• Sex life and/or sexual activity, preferences or orientation
• Precise geolocation
• Children’s data (where ‘child’ is defined by COPPA)
• Citizenship or immigration status

For more information, please review our Privacy Policy.