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Digital Content Restrictions

One question we get asked a lot about is “what content is restricted for online advertising campaigns?”  Below you’ll find a chart that provides some guidance on prohibited content:

Generally Applicable Content Prohibitions

Category Description
Weapons Content featuring the sale of or instructions to create bombs, guns, ammunition, or other weapons.
Violence Content that depicts, contains, or provides access to violent content.
Pornography Content that depicts, contains, or provides access to pornography, nudity, obscenity, and other “adult” content (Except risqué content as defined by and explicitly permitted by El Toro).
Piracy Content that El Toro reasonably believes:

  • Contains hosted content that is clearly and predominantly material that is likely to infringe or misappropriate a copyright, trademark, trade secret or patent of another party; or
  • Clearly induces infringement or misappropriation of a copyright, trademark, trade secret or patent of another party.
Morally reprehensible Content that El Toro reasonably deems to be (a) morally reprehensible or patently offensive, and (b) without redeeming social value.
Malware Content that contains, installs, links to, or prompts the download of any malware.
Interferes with other ads Content that obscures, replaces, modifies, or otherwise interferes with another party’s ads or ad inventory.
Interferes with navigation Content that causes interference with user navigation (e.g. preventing a user from leaving a page, by popping dialogs, pop-ups, new windows, etc.).
Inadequate privacy notice or consent Content that does not provide notice or does not obtain necessary user consent for data collection or for material functionality of a site or software through which ads are delivered, or through which data are collected for subsequent use in advertising.
Illegal drugs Content featuring the sale of drugs, pharmaceuticals, or drug paraphernalia that is illegal.
Illegal Content El Toro reasonably believes is likely to be in violation of any applicable law, regulation, or court order.
Hate speech Content that depicts, contains, or provides access to hate speech: gesture, conduct, writing, or display, including but not limited to anything that may incite violence or prejudicial action against a protected individual or group. Anything that disparages or intimidates a protected individual or group. The law may identify a protected individual or a protected group by race, gender, nationality, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or other characteristics.
Government forms or services Content that depicts, contains, or provides access to offers that charge for government forms or services that are available for a lesser charge or free from the government.
Flash Cookies and other LSOs Do not use LSO's including flash cookies, browser helper objects, and HTML5 localStorage. Ad creatives hosted by or trafficked through the El Toro platform may not set Flash cookies or other local shared objects (LSO's) for purposes of online behavioral advertising, ad delivery and reporting, or multi-site advertising. Prohibited uses include, but are not limited to, storing user ID's, interest segments, user browsing history, or other unique user data.
Fake Errors and Warnings Content that displays fake errors or warnings to induce user action, including, for example, warnings about viruses, missing codecs, and corrupt disks.
Defamation Content that depicts, contains, or provides access to defamatory content.
Auto-redirect Content that automatically redirects to other sites or apps.
Auto-downloads Content that depicts, contains, or provides access to any files that execute or download without intentional user interaction.

Other Restrictions

In addition to banned content, El Toro’s internal campaign review and approval practices closely track the NAI's Enhanced Standards for Precise Location Information, which restrict the use, sale, or share of information about device or user activity correlated to places of worship, medical facilities, temporary places of assembly (including political rallies, marches, or protests), or other sensitive points of interest.  El Toro has business processes and protocols for monitoring advertising campaigns, where every potentially sensitive advertising campaign is reviewed based on the audience, creatives, and landing page to ensure the legality of messages and that campaigns do not run afoul of El Toro’s policies.  We also require a campaign to have a minimum of 500 targets, which supports both campaign efficacy and legitimacy.

Content Allowed But Restricted

 

Category Description
Gambling Buyers: El Toro prohibits gambling ads of any kind targeted to serve in certain countries through the El Toro platform. Otherwise, El Toro permits gambling ads to be targeted to serve in jurisdictions where such ads are not prohibited so long as El Toro clients, on behalf of themselves and the advertisers whose ads they are trafficking, comply with certain requirements.
Risqué El Toro will not allow pornographic or obscene content (inventory, ads, and landing pages) to be bought or sold over the El Toro platform, under any circumstances. However, with explicit permission, "white labeled" (CNAMED) customers may transact in sexually-oriented, non-pornographic, non-obscene content within their own direct relationships on their own managed inventory. Notwithstanding this policy, El Toro may remove or deactivate any content in its reasonable discretion.
Toolbars, Plugins, Applications, and Similar Inventory Sources For any inventory generated from a user-installed toolbar, plug-in, app, or other mechanism, if the mechanism inserts or otherwise adds advertising units to an inventory source, and such source is owned or operated by a third party that is unaffiliated with the seller of the inventory, and such advertising units are added without explicit authorization from the third party, the inventory may be sold on El Toro only under the certain conditions.
Downloads For ads that promote, and directly or indirectly link to sites that contain software, the software must:

·Not contain malware;

·Provide the user with clear and conspicuous notice about all material functionality;

·Obtain informed consent from the user prior to download or installation;

·Provide an easy--to-use uninstall to the user; and

·Allow the user to maintain control over his or her computing environment.

Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) Buyers: No profiling children, no behavioral targeting based on prior visits to child-directed inventory, and no segments targeting children under 16. Also no collection or use of unique identifiers in association with ads served on child-directed inventory.

 

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