Ad quality

Index Exchange (“Index", “we”, or “our”) is committed to maintaining an advertising Exchange that is made up of high-quality, brand safe, and fraud-free advertisements (“ad” or “ads”).

These guidelines apply to any demand side platform, advertising network, advertising agency, or advertiser (collectively “Buyers”, “you” or “your”) that seek to have their ads participate in the Index Exchange marketplace (“Exchange”).

Buyers must comply with the guidelines contained in this document (in addition to all applicable laws and regulations). Ads and/or Buyers that do not meet these standards may be rejected and prevented from participating on the Exchange.

Advertisement Brand Safety Review

Index Exchange is a leader in providing a transparent ecosystem for both advertisers and publishers.

To deliver on our values and quality standards, we have a dedicated team of quality control experts who review the content and functionality of all ads before and after activation on the Exchange. These ad review processes mitigate risk to publisher The owner of a website or app where advertisements are served. properties by ensuring that ads are high quality, facilitate positive experiences for visitors, maximize monetization and limit exposure to bad actors and malware.

Minimum Ad Quality Standards

Your ads must meet the following content quality standards prior to being activated on the Exchange:

• Appear professionally produced;

• Be clear, forthcoming and non-deceptive;

• Be visually appealing;

• Be non-disruptive or distracting;

• Be free of disinformation, malinformation or misinformation;

• Be oriented and sized correctly for the frame; and

• Be inclusive and non-discriminatory.

Landing Page Requirements

Your ads must direct to landing pages that meet the following criteria:

• Are functional;

• Are easy to navigate and free of excessive overlays or pop-ups;

• Have a clear purpose (i.e., it is clear what product or service is being advertised);

• Are free of auto-launching downloads or any malware;

• Launch in a new browser tab or window when clicked or tapped in a desktop or mobile web browser environment; and

• Have a clear relationship to the ad from which it is linked.

Brand Suitability

We believe that all advertising content should be professional, respectful and appropriate for our supply partners. To meet these goals, we maintain a list of restricted and prohibited content categories to regulate sensitive content.

Restricted Content

Restricted content is sensitive content that may be allowed onto the Exchange if the ads meet Index Exchange’s standards for the particular restricted content category. The standards for each category vary, but in general, the standards include parameters such as geographic area, age controls, responsible-use language, and a lack of certain types of imagery or content.

Further, all ads that contain restricted content are assigned an advertiser industry and content group A category used to identify characteristics of campaigns based on the content of their creatives. Publishers can use content groups to block certain ad content from showing on their site, for example religious content.. These groupings empower publishers with control over the types of approved restricted content that appear on their sites.

Ads that contain or promote any of the following content are considered restricted:

• Alcohol;

• Cryptocurrency;

• Foreign Exchange;

• Cannabis and Cannabis Paraphernalia;

• Campaigns Targeting Children;

• Financial Services;

• Dating;

• Gambling;

• Pharmaceutical;

• Political;

• Tobacco;

• Weapons and Firearms.

Prohibited Content

Prohibited content is content that Index Exchange considers to be unacceptable to be represented in any ad on the Exchange, and is described in the below chart. Index Exchange strictly forbids prohibited content from appearing in ads under any circumstances. Any ads that are found to contain prohibited content will be immediately removed from the Exchange.

Content Category	Category Description
Adult & Explicit Sexual Content	Content that advertises sexually explicit adult content or services.
Crime and Harmful Acts	Content that depicts or advocates for criminal activities or other actions that are illegal or violate human rights legislation.
Death, Injury or Military Conflict	Content that depicts or advocates for violent, harmful or deadly activities.
Hate Speech and Acts of Aggression	Advertising content that includes any content that could reasonably be interpreted to be harmful or violate the rights of any group or individual.
Obscenity and Profanity	Advertising content that is offensive or disgusting by accepted standards of morality and decency.
Online Piracy	Ads that include pirated or copyright infringing content or advertise counterfeit products, services or content.
Spam or Harmful Content	Ads that harm users, their devices or otherwise impede the use of the content.
Terrorism	The promotion or advocacy of terrorism or any other content related to terrorism.

Ad Behavior

Index Exchange reviews all ads to ensure that their behavior does not create a negative experience for the user. Ads will be rejected if they:

• Display a broken, shaky, rapid flickering or flashing animation;

• Banner ads that contain audio triggered by anything other than a click;

• Initiate automatic downloads, redirects, pop-ups or pop-unders;

• Contain forced countdowns (web only);

• Qualify as Large Sticky Ads;

• Contain malware or other malicious content (e.g., phishing, Trojan horses, ransomware, worms, spyware, viruses);

• Mislead users to interact with ads (e.g., simulated warnings, error messages, request notifications, chat dialogue boxes, etc.);

• Do anything other than close when a displayed “close” button is clicked; and

• Significantly impede the loading or performance of the page, app or device on which the ad is being displayed.

Industry Standards

Index Exchange makes great efforts to ensure that our advertising experiences reflect industry practices and are current with advertising technology innovations. The standards discussed within these guidelines are consistent with the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s (“IAB Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). An advertising business organization that develops industry standards, conducts research, and provides legal support for the online advertising industry.”) Demand Quality Guidelines, Digital Advertising Alliance ("DAA") Self-Regulatory Principles and the Global Alliance for Responsible Media Brand Safety Standards, as well as advertising industry best practices generally.

Further, Index Exchange requires that ads follow the Better Ads Standards developed by the Coalition for Better Ads.

Advertisement Classification

All ads that meet Index Exchange quality requirements, will be assigned content groups, brands and industry groups labels. Assigning campaigns these qualities provide publishers with the capacity to block or allow ads based on the content of the advertisements, brands and industries that have been assigned to the campaign A collection of multiple ads in different formats.. This process increases transparency and provides publishers with greater control over the ads that appear on their properties.

• Content Groups: Content groups label and classify the creative A digital ad made available in various creative types, defined by their size in pixels such as 300x250px. specs, image content, language in the copy of the creative, and additional elements of the creatives in review.

• Brands: Brands label the brand represented by a particular creative. This allows publishers to block particular brands that they may not want to be associated with.

• Industry Groups: Industry groups label the type of product that an advertisement appears to represent. This allows publishers to block advertisements for particular types of industries from appearing on their properties.

For more information and a complete list of advertiser industry and content groups, please follow the links below:

• Industry categories;

• Content group definitions;

• Block an advertiser brand;

• Block an industry; and

• Remove a content block

Ad Takedown

Index Exchange will investigate all legitimate advertisement issues that are brought to our attention by Buyers. We recognize the importance of feedback and take all issues submitted to us very seriously and will begin to investigate reported issues within twenty-four (24) hours of receipt.

To submit an ad misplacement issue to Index, please submit all appropriate and relevant information to your Index Representative.

For more information about our ad misplacement submission and resolution policy, please see Ad misplacement submission and resolution.

Ongoing Monitoring

Although all ads are carefully selected before they are activated on the Exchange, Index Exchange implements rigorous monitoring processes to maintain the quality of ads served. This includes performing routine scans on all active ads to detect, resolve and limit exposure to malicious actors attempting to engage in fraud or spread malware. To help support our monitoring processes, Index also leverages third-party vendors that specialize in fraud and malware monitoring to help detect and eliminate malware within ads.

Privacy

Index Exchange expects Buyers to be forthcoming about how user data is collected and handled. Buyers are prohibited from misusing user data and from collecting data in ways that do not comply with applicable law.

Buyers are required to provide users with notice of your privacy practices, including but not limited to the ability for users to opt out of behavioural advertising. If your ads engage in interest-based advertising, you must include a ‘YourAdChoices’ as required by the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) that apply to this type of advertising.

Children’s Content

Buyers are responsible for complying with all children’s privacy regulations and must ensure that ads do not violate applicable requirements.

Legislative Compliance

You are responsible for complying with applicable legislation and ensuring your ads and landing pages do not contain content that is illegal or illegal to advertise in the region in which it is serving. In the event of a discrepancy between these guidelines and statutory law, statutory law will take precedence.

APPLICATION

Rights Reserved

These guidelines are not an exhaustive list of prohibitions and restrictions for ads. Index Exchange maintains the right to review all ads, and to reject, suspend, stop, pause, block or remove any ads from the Exchange at its sole discretion, regardless of whether a basis for removal is listed in these guidelines.

Index Exchange also reserves the right to update these guidelines at any time with or without notice.

Additional Information

For more information on our ad quality practices, please contact your Index Representative.