Compliance

VIOLENCE

• Presentation of violence or the results of violence must not be excessive, gratuitous, humiliating or instructional.
• Presentation of sexual violence is prohibited.
• Appropriate warnings must be given before content containing violence is presented, including reasonable steps being taken to prevent children accessing content containing inappropriate violent material.
• Violence must not appear in advertising material nor in services targeted at users under the age of 18.

SEXUAL CONTENT

• Nudity, pornographic or sexually explicit content is not permitted
• Sexual content must not be presented in advertising or services accessible to children.
• Services should not be advertised on adult (e.g. pornographic) sites or apps.

OTHER PROHIBITED CONTENT

• Content which incites, promotes, or encourages crime or hatred.
• Offensive language, including:
  • Disparaging or abusive words calculated to offend an individual or group of persons;
  • Obscenity and foul language;
  • Hate speech against a person or group or people based on race, ethnicity, religion, nationality, gender, sexual orientation or disability;
  • Graphic descriptions of violence and/or sexual acts.
• Biased portrayals based on gender;
• Portrayal of the consumption of controlled substances (e.g. tobacco, alcohol, drugs) or any other products for which advertising is prohibited.
• Material that is harassing, defamatory, libellous, abusive, threatening, obscene, or coercive;
• Material that violates the rights of any person or company protected by copyright, trade secret patent or other Intellectual Property Rights or similar laws or regulations;
• Material that Merchant’s know, or should have a reasonable basis to know, is derived from services or sites that permit illegal peer-to-peer sharing of copyrighted content;
• Unlawful (i.e. without consent) gathering, processing, distributing or use of personal data

COMPETITIONS AND PORNOGRAPHY

• Pornographic, gambling and prize competition services may not be operated on the INFOMEDIA platform.
• Competitions within services may be permitted where the competition is directly linked to an existing established brand or media, such as television show link-ups. This will be considered by INFOMEDIA on a case by case basis and is no guarantee a service will be accepted.

ADDITIONAL MENA TERRITORY RULES

The following material is prohibited in MENA Territories:

• Material that violates the principles of Islamic Law and Principles (Islamic Shari’a) and/or conflict with the customs, traditions and customs of the GCC and Arabian societies, are sexually explicit or suggestive, nudes, underwear or bikini, or show uncovered portions of female bodies except hands.
• Material that relates to tobacco, recreational drugs, alcohol,
• Material that relates to horoscopes, tarot or similar.

The following practices are not permitted by merchants in advertising, checkout flow or service content:

• Promoting products and services in a misleading manner;
• Promoting unrelated content based on popular search terms among natural search results;
• Redirecting users to unrelated third party websites to promote unrelated content;
• Hijacking clicks to redirect users to unrelated third party websites to promote unrelated content;
• Misleading users into liking webpages they did not intend to like;
• Inserting malicious code within advertisements;
• Click training, i-framing or similar methods which may cause a customer to click a CTA button unintentionally
• Posting false URL links on social networking websites to mislead users;
• Sending deceptive email or SMS spam;
• Entice users to non-existent content via social network ‘liking’;
• Sending advertisements that might be perceived as official notifications;
• Using misleading advertisements, including banners, pop-ups, and pop-unders;
• Misleading users into completing PRS offers to unlock content;
• Use of Malicious Software or Trojans to lock users’ internet browsers until payment is made or subscriptions joined in order to unlock browsers.
• Taking unfair advantage of any vulnerable customer or group of customers
• Targeting advertising at children (under the age of 18)
• Stating opinion as facts
• Failing to state the identity, current status and relevant professional qualifications of any person or entity dispensing advice (where a user may have a reasonable expectation that such advice would only come from a professional person e.g. medical advice, financial advice etc.…)
• Be unable to supply evidence to substantiate claims made in advertising

Additionally, targeting or failing to exclude advertising directed at the users of tablet devices unable to receive SMS messages in their default state (including but not limited to iPads) is prohibited without express permission from Infomedia. Any tablet users who are subscribed via a device incapable (in its standard form) of receiving operational messaging will be automatically entitled to a full refund regardless of service usage.

Merchants are required to document their advertising control processes and may be required to provide this documentation to Infomedia on request in case of a regulatory or carrier audit or request.

Calls To Action: It must be shown that customers have made purchasing decisions with fully informed consent. CTA buttons must therefore be unambiguously labelled to indicate that the customer is entering into an obligation to make payment, typically  ‘Subscribe’>’Confirm’ or ‘Buy’>’Confirm’. ‘Request PIN’>’Subscribe’/’Buy’ also acceptable. Any other wording must be approved by Infomedia before use.

ADDITIONAL UAE RULES

Price Display: All adverts for subscription services that lead directly to a checkout experience must clearly state the service price and payment frequency.

Advertising Sources: Affiliate marketing networks must not be used in the UAE, all service advertising must be via direct media buying.

Notwithstanding the aforementioned prohibition, use of the following advertising networks/content providers in any capacity is not permitted:

Headway
Adsimilis (WDGNB)
Vykonia
Avazu
MobilityApp
InMobi
Spirox
YeahMobi
MobiAds
CollectCent

Mobile Arts

ADDITIONAL UK RULES

Price Display: All adverts for subscription services that lead directly to a checkout experience must clearly state the service name, price and payment frequency.

Advertising Sources: Affiliate marketing networks must not be used in the UK, all service advertising must be via direct media buying.

Advertising to Children: It is strictly prohibited to target advertising to anyone under the age of 18 (‘children’) or permit advertising to appear on sites and in apps or any other locations likely to be frequented by children such as children’s websites (such as www.tinypop.com) or apps or games which are likely to be attractive to, or have a main audience of, children (such as TalkingTom). Care should also be taken when setting negative targeting advertising in mixed content websites such as YouTube to ensure that all possible steps are taken to prevent adverts appearing alongside children’s content. The exposure of children to online advertising is a highly sensitive issue in the UK DCB industry and carriers and the regulator reserve the right to suspend services breaching this requirement without warning.

ASA: Ads must comply with the relevant sections of the CAP Code (The UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising and Direct & Promotional Marketing) – https://www.asa.org.uk/codes-and-rulings/advertising-codes/non-broadcast-code.html

Only Subscription Renewal messaging required for Ooredoo

Unique shortcode per service required

Renewal Messages for daily billed services to be sent every 3 days (Etisalat) or Weekly (Du)

Advertising Rules: https://www.forbrukertilsynet.no/english/guidelines