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InMobi Advertising
Terms & Conditions

General

Publisher Policy

GDPR

Trust and Safety

Ensuring the safety of end users and peace of mind for advertisers and publishers is of paramount importance for InMobi.

As the number of mobile applications and spending on advertising grows, unfortunately so does fraud. Not only is fraud constantly evolving, but online fraudsters are also always changing their tactics to try to steal money from advertisers.

As a trusted partner to leading brands and publishers across the globe, InMobi has established processes and checks on our supply-side platform (SSP) and exchange to ensure brand safety and a fraud-free experience.

The term "Brand Safety" describes the controls that companies in the digital advertising supply chain employ to protect the reputation of brands when their ads appear next to illegal content, which may lead to a related loss of return on investment.

A great deal of content online today is not curated and this is brand unsuitable. InMobi adheres to the Brand Safety floor defined by the 4A's with IAB, and we have a zero-tolerance policy regarding brand safety and Invalid activities. The below set of categories (Images/Video/Audio/Text) are considered as high risk:

  • Adult and explicit sexual content
  • Arms and ammunition
  • Death or injury
  • Online piracy
  • Hate speech and acts of aggression
  • Sensitive social issue or violation of human rights
  • Spam or harmful content

Mobile Web:

In the past decade, the usage of mobile devices has increased, with that the customers' focus on mobile advertising and content has also increased. Mobile web simply mean web browser services accessed from mobile devices.

Consumers spend less time on mobile web compared to apps. However, there are a lot more mobile websites that have large followings and do not have their own mobile apps.

The fraud on mobile advertising has drastically increased with the usage. The main objective of the fraudster is to steal from advertiser and publishers. Not only does it drain revenue, but it also causes damage to workflow and data, ruining potential strategies before they've even begun.

At InMobi, every publisher is exhaustively reviewed before they are onboarded. Once the publisher is onboarded, the site registered is tested to ensure they follow and adhere to InMobi content policy. The sites are reviewed by our MRC-accredited third-party vendor to flag invalid traffic from the publishers, and the content is also reviewed by our in-house site approval team to make sure no unacceptable content is added on site.

Connected TV and Over-the-Top (OTT) Video

The majority of internet users now watch videos online each month. Most of this is consumed on OTT apps on mobile devices and through Connected TV. Fraud is not new to the OTT space, although the rise of OTT apps has put SSPs under pressure to determine what content is truly premium.

While InMobi requires its demand partners to ensure that the content shared adheres to our content guidelines, InMobi also has a stringent vetting process for CTV/OTT supply partners and endeavors to reduce any non-compliance. We adhere to MRC, IAB and TAG guidelines to ensure transparency and safety for all our demand partners. All apps are reviewed to check if they are COPPA compliant. InMobi is also integrated with MRC-accredited third-party vendors to identify and proactively prevent any instance of invalid activities.

Protecting Advertisers and Publishers from Invalid Activities

Measures to Protect Publishers:

InMobi requires its demand partners to restrict any advertisements that are offensive, deceptive, or misleading, contain spam and/or promote illegal products or services. We have a zero-tolerance policy for advertisers who do not comply with our ad quality guidelines.

Our ad content guidelines are region-specific and abide by each country's laws and regulations on digital advertising. Our creative review process is constantly updated and improved based on the business inflow on both the demand and supply ecosystem. With business scaling at both ends, we aim to keep the system clean and to cater to a diverse client base. We strive endlessly to maintain the highest quality standards to ensure both buyer and seller have a fair advantage in the ad auction.

We monitor and screen all ads through multiple ad quality (AQ) processes to ensure that only good quality ads are rendered on our supply. We have a comprehensive AQ response protocol where every demand partner and their ads are reviewed. If they are found to have sent brand unsafe/bad ads, they are immediately removed and suspended from our systems. 

InMobi's review process runs numerous back-end checks, including:

  • Buyer Verification: Buyer email ID, contact number and address are verified to make sure it's a valid buyer. IAB taxonomy is followed to categorize the creative. 
  • Programmatic Supply Preference: InMobi supports various kinds of supply filtering controls based on the buyer's preferences (client-specific safety filtering). We also honor all queries per second (QPS) limitations set by the buyer.
  • Ad Quality and Malware: Every publisher is concerned about the types of ads shown on their app/site. To protect publishers from malvertising like fraudulent domains, auto-redirects, scam ads and pop-ups, the InMobi SDK has a feature that captures all auto-redirections caused by any ad that is rendered on our supply. We also work with third-party vendors to identify such fraud and they are rejected before the ad is rendered.
  • Fraud Profiling: Our internal ad screening tools identify threats by verifying the domains in real time and block any ad with a known issue.

Measures to Protect Advertisers:

Ad fraud is type of scam which deceives advertisers into paying for something worthless such as fake traffic or even leads generated by bots. Ad fraud provides misaligned incentives, which open the door to a tremendous amount of fraudulent online activities whether it's by non-human or human traffic.

To protect advertisers from such invalid activities, InMobi implements strict policies and processes when onboarding publishers, including:

  • Seller Verification: Publisher properties undergo thorough evaluation, including ownership verification. Apps and sites are categorized, and ads.txt is mandated for mobile web and app-ads.txt for in-app supply. Additionally, all publishers must comply with guidelines established by the Media Rating Council (MRC) around invalid traffic (IVT) and viewability.
    • Seller Inventory Ownership: ads.txt and app-ads.txt is added by mobile web and in-app supply respectively in their websites to add transparency to the programmatic advertising ecosystem. It is a text file which publisher can add on their website and is accessed publicly. It is a secure method that publishers and distributors can use to declare the companies they authorize to sell their digital inventory. This makes it valid, simple, and easy to update.
    • Ads.txt/app-ads.txt supports transparent programmatic digital media transactions and can remove the financial incentive from selling counterfeit and misrepresented media. As publishers sell their inventory through a variety of sales channels, it helps the brand advertiser to know the inventory they are buying is from a legit publisher/ authorized reseller. The format to add the details in ads.txt file is #< SSP/Exchange Domain >, < SellerAccountID >, < PaymentsType >, < TAGID >
    • For CTV/ OTT, multiple entries have the ownership to send ad request, and they are called 'inventory sharing'. It can be app owner /content creator / distributor. The in-app owner ads.txt file, along with distributor information, the relationship and authorized seller and reseller information needs to be added.
    • If a participating company acting as a indirect seller/Intermediary must honor a Direct Seller’s app/ads.txt file if one has been published, buying only from entities identified within the published ads.txt file. If that company is transacting with in-app inventory, it must also honor a Direct Seller’s app-ads.txt file if one has been published, buying only from entities identified within the published app-ads.txt file.
    • If the Reseller / intermediary publisher is TAG registered it is mandated to pass payment id chain in requests.
    • More information on ads.txt is available via the IAB at - https://iabtechlab.com/ads-txt/, and publishers registered with us could also write to quality@inmobi.com to have their questions related to ads.txt and app-ads.txt answered.
  • Ad Adjacency: All publishers using the InMobi platform are required to adhere to InMobi content guidelines, and apps with a significant user base and request volume are reviewed at regular intervals to screen for any ad adjacency or ad experience issues.
  • Invalid Traffic Filtering: Extensive technical checks ensure ads are rendered on the registered and verified publisher property. All unregistered bundle IDs are immediately blocked, and the responsible publisher is deactivated.
  • Viewability Verification: We work with an MRC-accredited viewability measurement company. This partnership and our internal controls ensure that the ad is contained in the viewable space of the app based on pre-established criteria as per the campaign's set-up.
  • Anti-Piracy, Industry Standard Compliance and Certifications: InMobi is certified with TAG's Anti-Fraud program. InMobi does not allow non-compliant apps and follows the industry-wide app blocklist and domain blocklist. Publishers suspended for invalid activities are prevented from monetizing again on InMobi's platform.

TAKE DOWN POLICY: InMobi has established a well-defined Anti-Fraud Governance and Take Down Policy.

InMobi conducts internal audits on a regular basis across all supply and demand sources. This also includes quarterly TAG CAF audits and yearly reviews by independent auditors. Red Flag malvertising events are tracked and reported. Site and app traffic-related data is recorded, and any deviation determined as an anomaly or abnormal in the supply chain gets immediately reported to InMobi's Trust and Safety Team.

Bad players are identified quickly based on multiple validation reports from MRC-accredited partners combined with in-house technology and investigation. If any account is determined fraudulent, it gets suspended.An automated communication is then sent to the seller with the reason for suspension.

If the number of Red Flag events from a specific buyer breaches the defined threshold, the advertiser is suspended. Account suspension is communicated directly to buyers and partners by InMobi's central quality team.

InMobi adheres to MRC, TAG and IAB guidelines.

For more information, please reach out to us to speak with one of our experts.