Brand Safety Policy

Mobsta Brand Safety Policy

Mobsta is committed to protecting brands against the major issues plaguing brand safety facing the mobile display market. The processes that Mobsta have implemented to minimize risk to advertisers and ensure their ads are served in a safe environment are outlined below.

Quality Control/Assurance

Integrated SSPs to the Mobsta DSP provide levels of Quality Control/Assurance:

  • International Governing Bodies & Protocols (ex: DNT, COPPA, Privacy Shield)
  • Pre Bid measurement vendors: (IAS/DoubleVerify monitoring)
  • Appropriate / Inappropriate Schedules: (manually vetting 3rd Party Website redirects before acceptance to their platforms)
  • Prohibited Ad Content: not allowed under any circumstance
    • Obscene or pornographic material, adult material, adult services, nudity, excessive profanity
    • Violent content, racial intolerance, or advocacy against any individual, group, or organisation
    • Illicit drugs or drug paraphernalia
    • Tobacco, electronic cigarettes, smoking paraphernalia, or medical / recreational marijuana
    • Promotion of illegal activity, services, or content that violate applicable laws
    • Sale or promotion of weapons, firearms, or ammunition
    • Content that infringes on intellectual property, copyright, and/or trademark rights
    • File-sharing or torrent
    • Hacking, cracking, or any service that exploits weakness in a computer system, network, or software
    • System errors, alerts, or warnings
    • Phishing or advertisements that seek personally identifiable information (PII)
    • Counterfeit, fake, or bootleg products
    • Auto-redirect (redirects to landing page upon ad load without user action)
    • Auto-download (downloads file(s) upon ad load without user actions)
    • Auto-play audio
    • Auto-refresh
    • Malware, spyware, and/or viruses
    • Malicious Domains, Creatives
    • Crypto-currency/Mining
    • In-banner video rotation
    • Excessive shaking or flashing
    • Animation lasting longer than 15 seconds (in the US) or 30 seconds (outside the US while in accordance with local IAB guidelines)
    • Non-functional buttons or non-clickable ads
    • Arbitrage including rotating multiple advertisers’ content within a single ad tag and using publisher tags served as demand-side creative for the purpose of immediately selling impressions via real-time auctions
    • Technologies such as Flash cookies, browser helper objects, or HTML5 local storage
  • Restricted Content: may be pre-negotiated, have Mobsta approval, or the approval of the SSP
    • Alcoholic beverages
    • Gambling, including casinos, online gambling lotteries, and other games of chance
    • Pharmaceuticals, including prescription, over-the-counter, medical services, contraception, and sexual enhancement
    • Weight-loss products and services
    • Political or religious topics
    • Financial services such as short-term or payday lending
  • Prohibited Creative Attributes/Behaviours
    • (IAB8) Pop (e.g. Over, Under, or Upon Exit)
    • (IAB14) Windows Dialog or Alert Style (e.g., any creative that a user might mistake for an OS or application-level notification rather than an advertisement): This includes, but is not limited to, deceptive ads that resemble user interface elements (e.g., text boxes) and creatives that mimic buttons or icons that claim a functionality that is not there (e.g., play, chat, wink, friends, search buttons)
    • (IAB3) Expandable (Automatic) – ads that automatically expand without the user’s engagement or action (e.g., click, touch)
    • Auto-redirect: ads that automatically redirect the user without the user’s engagement or action (e.g., click, touch)
    • (IAB11) Ads that do not ask the user for permission before initiating any downloads / installations / services / fees. This includes Click-to-Call and Click-to-Subscribe ads that do not include an intermediary landing page or other prompt that clearly explains the terms and/or fees associated with the call or subscription.
    • Ads and Demand Partner use of the Mobsta platform that interfere with the operation of Mobsta’s network. For example, use that interferes with the normal operation of an end user’s device, or otherwise creates a safety or security risk to the Mobsta platform, our customers, or our end users, is prohibited.
  • Specific vendors provide a protocol for supporting fraud detection:
    • The Mobsta DSP is actively using an MRC-accredited inventory quality solution.
    • The impressions are reported in writing to the SSP no later than thirty (30) days after the close of the month during which the impressions were served.
    • The written report must include the relevant timeframe and type of the suspicious activity, number of suspicious impressions, and spend for the impression for each unique publisher ID and domain URL.
    • The SSP will verify in good faith that the relevant impressions are suspect traffic or were served in error by the SSP
    • The credit cannot exceed the total winning bid prices for noncompliant impressions.
    • A refund will be issued if the total credit requested for the month exceeds $500 USD.

Blacklist policy

Our SSP Partners provide the ability to blacklist publisher applications from campaigns based on specified criteria (ex: Country, AdSize, Publisher ID, App/Site ID, etc.) and as defined by the agency or advertiser, within their proprietary user interfaces.

For Managed service, the designated in-house Operations contact will monitor their own campaigns by way of proactively pulling data and reviewing daily reports to ensure their campaigns are running on publisher sites as expected. If they are not running as expected, the publisher sites will be removed from the affected campaign(s), investigate why/how it occurred, discuss preventative measure solutions to avoid a recurrence, and work towards putting the practice in place with necessary and relevant parties.

Whitelist policy

The Mobsta DSP Platform provide the ability to whitelist traffic sent via SSPs and their existing filtering mechanisms. Mobsta is also willing to work with agencies and advertisers to build whitelists that meet their brand safety standards. Whitelists can be applied at the campaign level within the platform. Said whitelisted traffic is then associated to media campaigns based on various elements on a campaign-by-campaign basis within the platform.

SSPs provide bidstream filtering (ex: 1st & 3rd party datasets (ex: IAS/MOAT/DCM), Private Marketplace Deals, internal blacklists, etc.) to ensure specified inventory is sent to the Mobsta DSP based on the kind of traffic relative to advertiser/client campaigns.

This inventory is then vetted & filtered (ex: IAB OpenRTB parameters via current Mobsta integration — https://www.iab.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/OpenRTB-API-Specification-Version-2-3.pdf) based on settings configured in the Mobsta DSP, to then be made available via whitelisting within the Mobsta DSP.

This whitelist supply is then curated into customisable publisher groups within the Mobsta DSP based on media campaign specifications (ex: Country / AdSize / Category / Device / etc.) to then be available and ready for use in association to live campaigns by Mobsta Operations team/self-service customers.

Third Party Verification

Mobsta has partnered with Moat and IAS, both MRC accredited organisations, to provide measurement of key brand safety metrics across Mobsta campaigns, which includes but not limited to Viewability, Invalid Traffic and Human impressions.

For audience verification, Mobsta have certified with Nielsen’s DR solution to measure the demographic profile of users reached on a campaign-by-campaign basis and check whether it meets the campaign’s target. This measurement help Mobsta to verify the accuracy of demographic data sent through by publishers and third-party data providers.

Mobsta can also run client-provided tags from all the major third-party trackers, Moat, DFA, DoubleVerify, Nielsen, ComScore & IAS, so that agencies and advertisers are able to measure with their preferred vendor of choice.

Takedown Policy

If Mobsta becomes aware of a Brand Safety violation or ad misplacement, we will attempt to take prompt steps to block and/or remove the problematic publisher application. The publisher application may be blacklisted or the campaign may be paused by Mobsta whilst the relevant parties (Mobsta/client) investigate, based on the nature of the request. All take down requests received within business hours (Monday-Friday 730am-530pm) will be executed within one working day, or within the timescales specified in individual terms and conditions, with best practices for expediting this request as soon as possible. The contractual consequences of not taking down an advertisement in accordance with agency/advertiser request are agreed with Mobsta on a case-by-case basis. Mobsta will fully investigate the cause of the violation and take any necessary actions to prevent a recurrence.