Publisher Guidelines

Media Owner’s sites or sites operated by media owners must not include, contain or promote content that:

• is adult, sexually suggestive, pornography or promotes sexual entertainment or merchandise or promotes sexual enhancement medications or supplements;
• is deemed invasive to privacy;
• contains gruesome, graphic or disgusting accounts or imagery;
• promotes cryptocurrency;
• is defamatory, indecent, seditious, offensive or harmful;
• enables users to participate in online, real-money gambling or 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 the game;
• distributes fake news
• contains or incites hate, violence,discrimination of any kind including racial, or ethnical discrimination;
• promotes or advocates for one religion over another;
• promotes extreme political views;
• promotes the sale of firearms, promotes weapons (or ammunition);
• promotes substances that alter mental state for the purposes of recreation such as drugs;
• facilitates the online sale of alcoholic beverages or promotes irresponsible alcohol consumption;
• promotes the online sale of prescription medication or the sale of unapproved pharmaceuticals and/or supplements.
• plagiarizes materials, breaches confidentiality or infringes any third party rights;
• promotes fraudulent behavior/content
• promotes content that may be considered to be illegal, unlawful or infringing under any applicable laws; and
• is targeted to children under the age of 16.

Media owners or operators must:

• ensure that their sites and apps or sites and apps operated by them operate in a stable, reliable manner, avoiding excessive downtime, broken pages, links or other technical failures that could negatively impact the user experience and advertiser trust;
• all traffic sources are legitimate, human-driven, and compliant with industry best practices;
• prevent invalid activity, including clicks, impressions, conversions, installs or attributions are not generated by a legitimate human or may be artificially inflating advertisers costs or media owners earnings;
• prevent any artificial engagement tactics or traffic acquisition initiatives that generate bot traffic, incentivized clicks or forced visits;
• not implement the Outbrain technology on sites or apps primarily designed to generate ad revenue with little to no original or meaningful content will be subject to removal (including made for advertising sites); and
• maintain traffic quality by preventing underperforming traffic sources or sections or any unusual user behaviour including but not limited to artificial engagement patterns or anomalous traffic spikes that differ significantly from the rest of the network.

Proper Use

Media owners must:

• not install Outbrain technology on sites or apps they operate unless the owner of the sites and apps has given you exclusive third-party rights to monetize the inventory;
• Provide clear "about us" / and "contact us" information on their owned or operated sites;
• Attribute content to authors and provide references where applicable; and
• Display all relevant notices required by regulatory or self-regulatory requirements including an accessible privacy policy on every page of their owned or operated sites.

Labeling, Ad Formats, Placement(s) Guidelines

Labeling and disclosure requirements

• All Outbrain paid widgets (where paid ads are shown) must (a) include a visible and unmodified AdChoices logo; and (b) clearly denote that the links and ads provided by the Outbrain technology paid for advertisements (including by labelling them as "ads", "sponsored content" or "paid"); and
• media owners must (i) at all times satisfy the requirements for an appropriate legal basis for the processing of personal data; (ii) disclose Outbrain to users via an appropriate privacy notice, which is updated from time to time and in accordance with applicable laws (iii) where required, collects consent via a consent management platform using the IAB Transparency and Consent Framework (the most recent version or successor thereto) and pass Outbrain a clear consent or no consent signal (iv), for purposes of the US privacy laws, pass opt-out signals to Outbrain using any industry-standard mechanism (for example, IAB’s CCPA framework or GPP); and (v) you shall provide a user choice mechanism such as the opt out page(s) of the Network Advertising Initiative, the Digital Advertising Alliance, the European Digital Advertising Alliance.

Operated Sites - Media operators must not install the Outbrain Technology on a site unless they either own or operate the site and apps or the owner of the sites and apps has given them exclusive third-party rights to monetize the inventory. If you believe a page using the Outbrain Technology is displaying your copyrighted material without the rights to do so, please report it using our contact us form.

Placement(s)

• Ads should not be placed in positions where users are likely to click accidentally (e.g., near frequently tapped buttons).
• Ads should not obstruct or hide any part of the content that users expect to interact with.
• Ads must be clearly distinguishable from editorial content.
• Clicking an ad should never be the only way to exit a screen.
• For additional guidance on ad standards, visit Better Ads Standards.
• Users should never be financially incentivised to interact with ads in the Outbrain widgets.
• It is recommended that Outbrain technology is implemented by media owners and operators on a page's right rail (sidebar), immediately below the site content (footer) or within the content.
• Outbrain can also power recommendation widgets across a broad range of page types such as Homepages, section fronts, mobile applications, etc.
• When installing the Outbrain technology on n photo gallery pages, media owner or operator must ensure the technology is only called once on the page and not with every gallery page; and
• For slideshows, paginated pages, casual games, and other experiences that require an end user to click "previous" or "next" or similar buttons to move through an experience, the Outbrain technology must not be installed immediately above the "previous" or "next" button, unless the user has an option further up the page to click "previous" or "next" or "skip" or there is sufficient space between the technology and the "previous" or "next" to avoid accidental clicks.

Authorized Digital Sellers / Ads.txt - media owners and operators must implement ads.txt and app-ads.txt by correctly declaring sellers (they work with and authorize to sell their inventory) in their ads.txt and app-ads.txt files. Outbrain requires that all partners update from time to time, as required by Outbrain, their ads.txt file to ensure a complete buyer experience. Please visit our Ads.txt Product Update for instructions on updating your file and additional information. Our full Ads.txt partner list can also be found within the Engage partner dashboard.