Advertising, Promotion & Content (APC) Policy
LinkingHuts is a Global Connectivity Platform - Transforming Connectivity of People, Businesses & Government Bodies Across the World.
We strongly believe that Advertisements or Promotions or Content by a Business Page (hereafter referred to as Ad-Promo-Content or APC) delivered through LinkingHuts should be relevant and useful to our members without deceiving them or endangering their safety. These APCs must not violate our Community Guidelines & our technical requirements.
LinkingHuts determines the professionalism and appropriateness of any APC, and reserves the right to refuse, remove or take any other appropriate action against any APC it believes is unsuitable.
These APC Guidelines will help you determine whether your APC is appropriate for LinkingHuts or not. Notwithstanding these Guidelines, legal compliance is the sole responsibility of the Business member (including its representatives and agents) or any other member having an APC on LinkingHuts. If you are unsure whether your APC is acceptable, you may contact us.
The guidelines below explain briefly LinkingHuts policies for advertising & promotion on the site. Any APC that violates any of the guidelines may be removed from LinkingHuts and in some cases further action may be taken such as that the concerned Business may be restricted from further advertising or promoting on LinkingHuts or may even be deactivated from the platform.
Following are the salient points of the APC Guidelines:
Your APCs should not be fraudulent, deceptive or include misleading content including titles, statements, illustrations, claims, offers or business practices. Your product or service or offer must accurately match the text of your APC - don't lie, don't exaggerate and don't make false claims. The photos and images in your APC should have a reasonable relationship to the product or service or offer being showcased. The claims you make in your APC should have factual support. Do not make deceptive or inaccurate claims about competitive products or services. Do not imply you or your product are affiliated with or endorsed by others without their permission. Do not showcase prices or offers that are inaccurate. All fees and taxes that are legally required to be disclosed should be included. APCs must not use tactics that are intended to circumvent our APC review process or other enforcement systems. This includes techniques that attempt to disguise the APCs.
APCs must be relevant and appropriate to the product or service being offered and the audience viewing the APC. They must clearly represent the company, product, service or brand that is being showcased.
Please use correct spelling and grammar in the text of your APC. Do not use non-standard spelling, grammar, capitalisation, punctuation, or repetition in your APC. Do not use excessive capitalisation in your APC. With the exception of valid acronyms, words should never be fully capitalised in your APC. Do not use excessive or inappropriate punctuation in your APC. Do not repeat punctuation and do not use more than a single exclamation point in your APC. Do not use any symbols (i.e. *, @) in a manner that differs from its standard meaning. Do not use a symbol in replacement of a letter (e.g. 'cl!ck', ‘b@t’). Do not repeat words or phrases in your APC.
Please use only trademarks that you have a legal right to use in your APC. Your APC must not include any text that may be deemed as infringing upon or violating the rights of any third party, including copyright, trademark, privacy, publicity or other personal or proprietary rights unless express permission has been granted by the trademark owner. Any APC found to be infringing on the trademark of a complainant will be removed from LinkingHuts. You should not use trademarks, logos, service marks or company names in a way that would be confusing to the user, or imply an affiliation or endorsement when there is none. Trademark owners can send concerns about the use of their trademarks to us. Please do not use "LinkingHuts" or “LinkingHuts” or refer to any of these (the organisation, brand, or site) in your APC. Do not imply affiliation with or an endorsement by LinkingHuts.
The products and services advertised in your APC should have fair and legal billing practices. Pricing, fees and payment terms should be clear and easily searchable and understandable by your customers prior to their purchase or completion of the transaction, including explaining the rights to refunds, termination and any applicable interest.
Even if legal in the applicable jurisdiction, LinkingHuts does not allow APCs that advocate, promote or contain content that discriminates against, harasses, provokes or disparages people or encourages predatory advertising practices based on age, gender, religion, ethnicity, race or sexual preference. APCs that promote the denial or restriction of fair and equal access to education, housing, or credit or career opportunities are prohibited.
Even if legal in the applicable jurisdiction, LinkingHuts does not allow APCs that include hate speech or show or promote violence or discrimination against others or damage to their property or are personal attacks on any individual, group, company or organisation or otherwise advocating against or targeting any individual, group, company or organisation. LinkingHuts also does not allow harassing, threatening, shocking, sensational, disrespectful or excessively violent APCs.
Please use appropriate and acceptable language in your APC. Do not use language that could be considered offensive by any reasonable viewer of your APC. LinkingHuts is the sole judge of the appropriateness of any words or phrases in your APCs on LinkingHuts.
Even if legal in the applicable jurisdiction, LinkingHuts does not allow APCs that are indecent, vulgar, suggestive or that, in the opinion of LinkingHuts, may be offensive to good taste. In special circumstances, LinkingHuts may determine that an APC that was acceptable earlier is no longer appropriate given current events. APCs that depict violent or degrading behaviour are not acceptable. Provocative speech is prohibited in APCs on LinkingHuts and that includes provocative speech related to political or religious topics. APCs must not contain profanity or bad grammar and punctuation. Symbols, numbers and letters must be used properly.
All political advertising must clearly identify the person or entity that paid for the message. APCs not financed by a candidate or campaign must indicate whether the content is authorised by a candidate and, if not, include contact information for the person or entity that paid for the message. Political APCs must comply with applicable laws, including with respect to identifying the paid sponsor or observing blackout or quiet periods prior to election..
LinkingHuts does not allow APC targeting based on sensitive categories that asserts or implies personal attributes such as financial status, alleged/actual commission of a crime, political affiliation/beliefs, racial or ethnic origin, religious or philosophical affiliation/beliefs, sexual behaviour or orientation, trade union membership, age, gender identity, disability, medical condition (including physical or mental health).
APCs must not constitute, facilitate or promote illegal products, services or activities. Products and services that are subject of the APC, should be legal to purchase and legal to use in the jurisdiction in which they are being marketed. APCs themselves should comply with applicable laws regarding advertising, including age and content restrictions. APCs targeted to minors must not promote products, services or content that are inappropriate, illegal or unsafe, or that exploit, mislead or exert undue pressure on the age groups targeted. Countries and states may have different laws that set different advertising requirements on the same or similar products. APCs must not promote the sale or use of unsafe supplements, as determined by LinkingHuts at its sole discretion. APCs that promote acceptable dietary and herbal supplements may only target people who are at least 18 years of age. APCs must also not promote the sale of spy cams, mobile phone trackers or other hidden surveillance equipment. Examples of products and services that might be illegal: Resale of event tickets, products designed to interfere with the enforcement of traffic laws (radar detectors), counterfeit goods, replica goods, live animals, animal products, surveillance products, encryption products/services, de-encryption devices and services, and unsafe health supplements.
LinkingHuts does not allow APCs for fake documents that could be used to trick or defraud or services that assist with obtaining documents in violation of applicable rules. Examples of prohibited fake documents are:
- Academic degrees
- Professional licenses or certifications
- National IDs
- Working permits (immigration status)
- Business licenses,
- Birth certificates
- Passports or immigration papers
- Invoices or receipts
- Medical records
- Noble titles/ status
LinkingHuts does not allow APCs for products or memorabilia promoting offensive, violent or hateful groups or criminal acts such as bombings, shootings or rapes.
All APCs related to Alcoholic Beverages, Tobacco Products & Cigarettes must comply with applicable laws of the land where the APC is being shown.
LinkingHuts does not allow APCs related to prescription pharmaceuticals, recreational drugs or any related products or services. All those APCs that promote illegal drugs, highs, psychoactive effects of substances, or aids to pass drug tests are all prohibited.
LinkingHuts does not allow APCs related to weapons, firearms, ammunition, fireworks, stun guns, air rifles, pyrotechnical devices or other violent products or services.
LinkingHuts does not allow APCs related to sexual or adult content, including escort services, massage and pornography. This includes nudity, depictions of people in explicit or suggestive positions or activities that are overly suggestive or sexually provocative.
LinkingHuts does not allow APCs related to adult products or services (e.g. sex toys, personal sexual services, escort services, prostitution, sexual services, strip clubs, erotic dancing, erotic massage, or international bride services) unless they promote family planning and contraception. APCs for contraceptives must focus on the contraceptive features of the product and not on sexual pleasure or sexual enhancement, and must be targeted to people aged 18 years or older.
LinkingHuts restricts APCs for dating services. The dating services must be legal in the applicable jurisdiction, and must not engage in "escort type" services where any person is compensated to participate in the date. LinkingHuts reserves discretion to determine the appropriateness of the service.
LinkingHuts does not allow APCs for the services that are used for the purpose of (or that are primarily used for) distribution of software, media and other content in violation of the intellectual property rights of others.
LinkingHuts does not allow APCs related to illegal - gambling, real money games of skill or real money lotteries or online real money casinos and sweepstakes or the sale of virtual currency (e.g., gaming). APCs related to the following are prohibited, if illegal: sports betting, bingo or poker, gambling tours and tutoring, tools and software for gambling, scratch games. Authorised gambling, games of skill or lottery advertisement must target people above the legal age who are in jurisdictions for which permission has been granted.
LinkingHuts does not allow APCs that promote black magic, paranormal activities, dream interpretations and witchcraft.
LinkingHuts does not allow APCs for furs or products made from the furs, hides or body parts of animals included on any government endangered species lists.
LinkingHuts does not allow APCs that promote or endorse actions that are likely to harm one's health, such as bulimia, anorexia, binge drinking, misuse of legal drugs. In many jurisdictions, LinkingHuts may limit or restrict advertising related to health matters because it might be inappropriately age targeted or deemed offensive. APCs must not contain "before-and-after" images that contain unexpected or unlikely results, far from reality. APCs must not imply or attempt to generate a negative self-perception in order to promote dietary, weight loss or other health-related products.
LinkingHuts may not allow APCs that promote or endorse products, services or actions that would result in a breach of LinkingHuts' Terms & Conditions or Privacy Policy, or that LinkingHuts believes are intended to, or may result in, harm to LinkingHuts or its users.
LinkingHuts allows APCs that solicit funds only if they comply with applicable law and would qualify as tax deductible or charitable in the applicable jurisdiction or contribute directly & transparently to official political candidates or organizations.
- LinkingHuts does not allow APCs for payday loans, paycheck advances or any other short-term loan intended to cover someone's expenses until their next payday
- Student loans services: APCs promoting student loans services must be targeted to people aged 18 years or older. APCs must not promote misleading or deceptive services related to student loan consolidation, cancellation or refinancing
- Penny auctions: APCs may not promote penny auctions, bidding fee auctions or other similar business models
- Financial services: APCs promoting credit card applications or financial services with accredited institutions must clearly provide sufficient disclosure regarding associated fees on the APCs landing page. APCs promoting loans or insurance services must not directly request the person to input financial information, including credit card information
LinkingHuts does not permit APCs related to scams like illegal financial schemes, pyramid schemes or other fraudulent or illegal financial arrangements or investment opportunities. APCs promoting income opportunities must fully describe the associated product or business model, and must not promote business models offering quick compensation for little investment, including multi-level marketing opportunities.
- Link Behaviour: Do not deceive, confuse, or otherwise degrade the experience of members who click on your APC. The domain of your Display URL must match the domain of your Destination URL. All members must be sent to the same destination URL and landing page from a click on your APC. Do not send members to a landing page that generates a pop-up. The landing page must allow users to be able to navigate away from the page, including to use the browser's 'Back' button and return to the page that the APC was displayed on. The products and services promoted in an APC's text must match those promoted on the landing page, and the destination site must not offer or link to any prohibited product or service. APCs must not direct people to non-functional landing pages or contain images that portray non-existent functionality
- Low-quality or disruptive content: APCs must not contain content leading to external landing pages that provide an unexpected or disruptive experience. This includes misleading APC positioning, such as overly sensationalised headlines, and leading people to landing pages that contain minimal original content and a majority of unrelated or low-quality content
- Automatic animation: APCs must not contain audio or flash animation that plays automatically without a person interacting with it or expands within LinkingHuts after someone clicks on the APC
Do not use an APC to promote, install or distribute viruses, worms, spyware, malware or other malicious software, whether through the APC creative or landing page that results in an unexpected or deceptive experience. This includes links to sites containing these products. Software should only be installed with the permission of the user and should be readily removable by the user. Software features should be made apparent to the user, with no undisclosed features or functions that could harm the user or data, software or devices of the user. Do not use any browser flaws/exploits to install software or bypass standard browser security restrictions.
Do not use an APC to promote a website that tricks a user into providing personal or other information that can be used to exploit or cause harm to the users.
All APCs must support https throughout the session flow. If you collect sensitive information on your site linked to the APC, we ask that you use HTTPs.
Advertisers remain responsible for ensuring that they are compliant with local laws and regulations on the subject of privacy and data protection. Do not use tracking cookies to track users across sites without full disclosure and consent of the users (e.g. do not use an "ever cookie" or "zombie cookie").
APCs that promote products or services for hacking are prohibited. APCs must not promote products or items that facilitate or encourage unauthorised access to digital media. The following APCs are prohibited: instructions on how to illegally alter with electronic equipment, or bypass digital content management systems or otherwise illegally tamper with software, servers, cell phones, or websites, or listen in or record conversations or information without proper consent.
Advertisers or Business Pages must not create lead APC questions to request the following types of information:
- Account numbers
APCs must not request account numbers, including frequent flyer numbers, loyalty card numbers or cable or telephone account numbers - Criminal history
APCs must not request information regarding criminal or arrest history - Financial information
APCs must not request financial information, including bank account numbers, bank routing numbers, credit or debit card numbers, credit scores, income, net worth or how much debt someone has - Government-issued identifiers
APCs must not request government-issued identifiers, including National Insurance numbers, passport numbers or driving license numbers - Health information
APCs must not request health information, including information on physical health, mental health, medical treatments, medical conditions or disabilities - Insurance information
APCs must not request insurance information, including current insurance policy numbers - Political affiliation
APCs must not request information regarding political affiliation - Race or ethnicity
APCs must not request information regarding the race or ethnicity - Religion
APCs must not request information regarding religion or philosophical beliefs - Sexual orientation
APCs must not request information regarding sexual orientation or information about the sexual life of the individual, including what gender(s) the person prefers to date - Template questions
APCs must not request the same or substantially similar information that you could use a template question to request - Trade union membership
APCs must not request information regarding trade union membership status - Usernames or passwords
APCs must not request usernames or passwords, including usernames and passwords for existing and new accounts
- Brand endorsement: APCs must not imply an LinkingHuts endorsement or partnership of any kind
- LinkingHuts branded content: APCs linking to LinkingHuts branded content (including pages, groups, events or sites that use LinkingHuts login) may make limited reference to "LinkingHuts" in APC text for the purpose of clarifying the destination of the APC
- Copyrights and trademarks: All other APCs and landing pages must not use our copyrights, trademarks or any confusingly similar marks, except as expressly permitted by our Brand Usage Guidelines
Use of our brand assets
- Ensure that any data collected, received or derived from your LinkingHuts APC is only shared with someone acting on your behalf, such as your service provider. You are responsible for ensuring that your service providers protect any LinkingHuts APC data or any other information obtained from us, limit their use of all of this information, and keep it confidential and secure
- Don't use LinkingHuts APC data for any purpose except on an aggregate and anonymous basis (unless authorised by LinkingHuts) and only to assess the performance and effectiveness of your LinkingHuts APC campaigns
- Don't use LinkingHuts APC data to build, append, edit, influence or augment user profiles, including profiles associated with any mobile device identifier or other unique identifiers that identify any particular user, browser, computer or device
- Don't transfer any LinkingHuts APC data (including anonymous, aggregate or derived data) to any advertising network, advert exchange, data broker or other advertising or monetisation-related service
If LinkingHuts believes that you or your APC is in violation of these guidelines, we may disapprove the APC for display on LinkingHuts or we may deny you the right to display any APC on LinkingHuts until LinkingHuts believes that you & your APCs are in compliance with these guidelines. In some rare cases, we may decide to ban APCs generated or posted by you. If you have questions regarding this, you may contact us. Each APC is reviewed against these policies. If you think that your APC was either not approved or removed from the platform by mistake, please let us know.
All APCs on LinkingHuts are reviewed to make sure that they meet our APC Guidelines. During the APC review process, we'll check your APC's images, text, targeting and positioning, in addition to the content on your APCs landing page. Your APC may be removed from the platform if the landing page content isn't fully functional, doesn't match the product/service promoted in your APC or doesn't fully comply with our APC Guidelines. If your APC hasn't been approved or has been removed due to not fully complying with our policies, you can edit it and resubmit it for review. If you can't edit your APC or feel that it not being approved was a mistake, you can appeal the decision by writing to us.
- The APC Guidelines apply to APCs at LinkingHuts platform
- Your use of LinkingHuts products and services is part of "LinkingHuts" under LinkingHuts Terms & Conditions.
- APC owners are responsible for understanding and complying with all applicable laws and regulations. Failure to comply may result in a variety of consequences, including the cancellation of APCs you have placed and termination of your account
- We do not use sensitive personal data for APC targeting. Topics you choose for targeting your APC don't reflect the personal beliefs, characteristics or values of the people who use LinkingHuts
- APCs are public information and may be re-shared and accessed by users outside of the targeted audience and remain accessible after the campaigns end (e.g. if shared, until the users delete it, or visible to users through their account tools)
- If you are managing APCs on behalf of other APC owners, each APC owner or client must be managed through separate APC accounts. You are responsible for ensuring that each APC owner complies with these APC Guidelines
- We reserve the right to reject, approve or remove any APC for any reason, at our sole discretion, including APCs that negatively affect our relationship with our users or that promote content, services or activities contrary to our competitive position, interests or advertising & communication philosophy
- APCs are public information, as described in the LinkingHuts Privacy Policy and can be shared & reshared on our platform
- LinkingHuts will determine the size, placement, and positioning of your advertisements & promotions.
- We do not guarantee the activity that your advertisements & promotions will receive, such as the number of clicks your advertisements & promotions will get
- If you are placing APCs on someone else's behalf, you must have permission to place those APCs, including the following:
- You warrant that you have the legal authority to bind the APC owner to these terms and the Member Agreement
- You agree that if the APC owner you represent violates these terms or the Terms & Conditions, we may hold you responsible for that violation
- LinkingHuts has the right to use or reject any of your APCs for marketing or promotional purposes
- You will not issue any press release or make public statements about your relationship with LinkingHuts or the Services without our prior written permission
- We cannot control how clicks are generated on your APCs and we are not responsible for click fraud, technological issues, or other potentially invalid click activity that may affect the number of views on your APCs, wherever applicable
- Our license to run your advertisement & promotion will end when we have completed your order. You understand, however, that if users have interacted with your advertisement, your advertisement may remain on the platform (e.g. shared until the users delete it or visible to users through their account tools)
- For policies that require prior permission, LinkingHuts may grant these permissions
- These policies are subject to change at any time without notice
