BidCore Creative Guidelines

BidCore Creative Guidelines

Overview

These creative guidelines are intended to ensure that all Advertising that you make available to the BidCore Platform is of high quality, and provides an ad experience that is acceptable for viewers. All Advertising must be appropriate for a general audience and for the type of placement in which it will be displayed. As an advertiser using the BidCore Platform, it is your responsibility to make sure that both you and your ads comply with all applicable laws, rules, regulations, and industry standards in each geographical area where the Advertisements may appear. Your Advertising must not misrepresent the products or services being promoted and must not mislead or offend its viewers.

BidCore reserves the right to reject, remove, or request modifications to an ad in its sole discretion, for any reason. BidCore may suspend your access to the BidCore Services and/or terminate your BidCore Agreement if you fail to comply with  these Creative Guidelines and/or the BidCore Policies. BidCore reserves the right to amend these Creative Guidelines from time to time by giving notice of this to you in writing and your continued use of the BidCore Platform after such notification shall constitute your deemed acceptance.

Section 1: General Creative Guidelines
The Guidelines in this section apply to all Advertising that you make available using the BidCore Service.

1.1 Background Colors and Borders

Viewers of your Advertising must be able to distinguish ads from non-sponsored content on the page. Background colors and design of ads must be distinct from non-sponsored content on the page, such that viewers can identify the clickable spaces associated with an ad.

If an ad does not have a border, it must feature a background color that contrasts with the background color of the page.

Ads that take up most of the screen (such as mobile interstitial ads) or are distinct from their page backgrounds because of ad placement design (such as Marquee ads, Seller Central log-in and homepage placements) do not require a border.

1.2 Distracting Ads
Animation features and other interactive elements in ads must be engaging and complement the viewer experience, and must not distract or deceive.

Prohibited distracting features include, but are not limited to:

  • Flashing, blinking, or, pulsating objects, images, or text.
  • Frequent or fast contrast transitions (for example frames with multiple changes from white to black).
  • Excessive animation (for example, frame changes occur every 1 or 2 seconds or visual objects within the animation that seem to move constantly).
  • Animation that mimics user interaction, such as moving mouse cursors or clicking buttons.

1.3 Fake functionality

Fake functionality can trick viewers into clicking on ads by believing that certain inactive elements of an ad are interactive and can provide value to them.

Ad elements that a viewer would usually expect to be able to interact with must be functional. For example, ads with a free text field prompting the viewer to “enter your zip code” must lead to a landing page with information tailored to that viewer’s postcode. Driving to a generic landing page or asking for the zip code to be re-entered is prohibited.

1.4 Image Quality

Prohibited low-quality images include, but are not limited to: crowded images with too many visual objects in one creative, blurry, distorted, low-resolution, pixelated, smudged, or stretched images.

1.5 Intended Format

Ads must match the “intended format” of the slot they are loaded into. For example, a video creative must not load into an ad slot intended for still images.

1.6 Reselling/Arbitrage

The reselling and/or arbitrage of ad spaces is prohibited. The BidCore Buyer of the ad space must be the entity that directly works directly with the advertiser and may not resell that ad space in real time to another buyer, either within BidCore or to another third party DSP or network.

Section 2: Animation and Video

Animated ads

  • Maximum animation length: 30 seconds
  • Initial animation can loop a maximum of 3 times

Video ads
Autoplay

  • Play/Pause, Stop, and Mute buttons are required for video longer than 15 seconds.
  • Video stream length on Standard IAB Ad unit: up to 15 seconds.
  • Frequency cap: 5 times per 24 hours per campaign.
  • Audio must be viewer-initiated on click or tap (meaning that autoplay ads must begin muted).
    • The use of rollovers to initiate audio is prohibited.
    • When audio is switched on by the viewer, a mute button is required.
    • Video ads without sound are permitted.

Viewer-initiated video ads

  • Maximum video stream length and audio served in conjunction with a video stream: 3 minutes.
  • Play/Pause, Stop, and Mute buttons are required.

 

Section 3: Prohibited Content

As a BidCore customer you acknowledge and accept the BidSwitch Buy-side policies located here which apply to the BidCore Platform. Advertising content must comply within these policies.

If you are not currently a BidCore customer and you are interested in finding out more above our BidCore Services, please contact our BidCore Team by clicking here.

You agree to comply with BidCore’s online technical specifications relating to the use of the BidCore Platform (available here).

Any defined terms set out in your agreement with BidCore relating to your use of the BidCore Platform shall apply to these BidCore Creative Guidelines.