Network Rejection Reasons

The process of approving or rejecting campaigns varies depending on which network they are sent to. Rejections can happen because of one or multiple reasons. Please check the official network documentation linked below for additional information. You may not receive the specific reason why a campaign or ad was rejected, but these guidelines and rules can help you increase your approval rate by being aware of what networks look for in determining what to approve or reject.

Content.ad

This policy is provided for general guidance only.  All images, headlines, and landing pages must comply with applicable laws, regulations and codes. Content.ad reserves the right to reject any content for any reason.

Content Headline

• Must contain correct spelling, punctuation, and capitalization
• Must not make any unsubstantiated or misleading claims
• Must not attack other products or competitors
• Must be related to the underlying content and must not be sensational
• Must not contain company branding

Content Image

• Must be clean and crisp with a clear subject
• Must not be primarily text
• Must not be a before & after photo of a product’s effects
• Must be tasteful (no eroticism, or “gross-out” images)
• Must not distort the subject for effect
• Must not contain arrows, circles, borders, highlights, etc.
• Must be related to the underlying content
• Must not contain a company logo or branding

Landing Page

General

• Content must be in the form of text and/or video
• Content must match the content type of the campaign that it’s in (details)
• Content must not be misleading or make fraudulent claims
• Content may not generate pop-up windows or redirect the user to an unrelated page
• Sponsored content must be clearly labeled

Obscene or Pornographic

• Content that is deemed to be vulgar, indecent or in bad taste is considered non-compliant.  This includes, but is not limited to, content considered to be erotic or primarily sexual in purpose, such as adult-oriented material.

Discriminatory

• Content that contains pictures or text advocating prejudice or discrimination against any race, national origin, religion, disability or handicap, gender, age, or sexual orientation is considered non-compliant.

Religious

• Content from religious organizations does not run in the Content.ad network.

Political

• Political content is defined as public policy, advocacy, political party or candidate content. Content.ad will use commercially reasonable efforts to make content opportunities available to all political organizations
• Content that manipulates an image of a candidate is considered non-compliant.
• Content that takes the form of an attack aimed at discrediting the opposing candidate or party is considered non-compliant.

Gambling*

• Content that promotes betting, lotteries or gambling — unless it is for national or local government-sanctioned lotteries such as state-sponsored lotteries in the United States — is considered non-compliant..*This restriction does not apply to content targeted exclusively to the UK.

Tobacco

• Tobacco, tobacco brand or tobacco product content does not run in the Content.ad network.

Prescription Drugs, Diet Drugs & Diet Regimens

• Content offering unsubstantiated claims is considered non-compliant.
• Pharmaceutical content to consumers must be in compliance with FDA guidelines for Direct to Consumer (DTC) content.

Marijuana or Illegal Drugs

• Content on the subject of marijuana, legal or otherwise, or any illegal drug use is considered non-compliant.
• Supplements that allegedly mimic illegal drugs or drug use, such as herbal ecstasy, “natural” Adderall, etc. are considered non-compliant.

Gemini

Verizon Media (Yahoo) has policies and restrictions for ads that appear on Verizon Media sites. These policies aim to make users feel safe and comfortable.

Sometimes ads are rejected if they do not comply with Verizon Media's policies, or on hold if they are potentially out of compliance. An ad may be on hold temporarily if it is under review.

Frequent Issues

Descriptions that use capital letters incorrectly in the description

• Make sure that the description uses capital letters only when necessary. Just like this sentence which only has two capitals once at the beginning and once for Yahoo’s name.

Overuse of exclamation points

• Do you use a lot of exclamation marks in your title and description? Is every sentence an exclamation? Use them appropriately and sparingly. In general, consecutive, repeating exclamation points or ad text which uses an exclamation point at the end of every sentence - aren’t allowed.

Using Spammy Text

• Does your ad contain phrases in your ad like “Click here.” “One Trick to _____” “Hidden Method for ___ “ - do these phrases help users understand what product or service you are offering to them? Or do they obscure your service and mimic frequently seen, spammy phrases? Use phrases that clearly apply to your offer and are compelling and helpful to users.

Policy: Clear Ad Text

• Use correct grammar, spelling, spacing, and punctuation in ads.
• Do not use spammy, meaningless, confusing text; repeating phrases; excessive punctuation or excessive abbreviations.
• Titles must be title-cased.
• Descriptions must be sentence-cased.
• Tips: - Use as much of the 50 character title space as possible. - Fill out the 150 character space as much as you can. - Avoid using abbreviations, symbols, and slang such as ‘YOLO! Buy Ins for >$1K/mo now ‘til 12/1 in NW MN. Save $$$ b4 you zzzz!’ - Avoid exclamation marks!!! and symbol$ in place of words. It looks cheap doesn’t it? - Avoid spammy text like ‘Buy Now! Buy Now! Buy Now!’, ‘Click here!’, ‘Ridiculous Trick’, ‘Easy Tip’ and other similar text that obscures what product or service is being promoted. - Focus on creating clear ads that are easy for users to scan and absorb. - Capitalize the first and last words in titles and subtitles and capitalize all other major words including nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and some conjunctions. - Lowercase conjunctions and articles: ‘like’, ‘and’, ‘but’, ‘for’, ‘or’, ‘and’, ‘the’, ‘a’, and ‘an’. - Lowercase prepositions, regardless of length, except when they are used adverbially or adjectivally. For example: ‘Close Up the Shop’, ‘Hit the Off Switch’.

Outbrain

Outbrain has guidelines for Acceptable Page Types, Prohibited Categories, Restricted Categories, Landing Page Guidelines, Headline and Source Guidelines, Image Guidelines, and Additional Publisher Guidelines available for review on their official page.

Prohibited Categories

• Adult
• Alcohol
• Drugs
• Tobacco
• Financial Services*
• Gambling
• Games/Contests/Sweepstakes
• Health Services*
• Malware
• Online pharmacies
• Weapons & Explosives
• Cryptocurrency

Restricted Categories

Dating & Personals

• Content must not promote one-night stands, hook-ups, and sexual encounters
• Content must not promote infidelity or casual sex

Health/Beauty & Costmetics

• May not make illegitimate or unproven claims about results
• No before/after photos of unlikely results
• May not allude to diagnose, cure, prevent, treat, or reverse any disease, condition, or illness

Financial Services

• Content must comply with financial governing bodies

Cryptocurrency

• Cryptocurrency is not allowed, with the exception of editorial content from premium publisher sites. The following is explicitly not allowed:
  • Digital currency exchanges
  • ICOs
  • Investment and trading advice
• However, selected countries may decide to run cryptocurrency offers that they deem are valid in their country only.

Gambling

• Content cannot include the promotion of gambling, or be hosted on a site where gambling is facilitated
• No paid Fantasy Sports
• Apps promoting free games is allowed
• Promotion of physical casinos (as a destination) is allowed
• State Run lotteries are allowed

Negative Earned Media

• Direct competitors cannot promote negative earned media or content that defames or otherwise compromises an industry competitor without clear disclosure

Political Advertisements

• All political content must have clear disclosure (ie. Promoted By [Political Party])

Headline and Source Guidelines

The following is Prohibited:

Inaccurate, Misleading, or Overly Sensational Headlines

• Does not accurately depict the content
• Exaggerates or embellishes the content
• “Too good to be true” headlines (i.e. “One weird trick that will help you lose that belly fat”)

Offensive Headlines

• Contains offensive words in any language
• Employs sexual/violent/explicit language that sensationalizes content

Excessive or Missing Capitalization

• Do not use excessive capitalization within single words, such as in "LEARN MORE." A correct replacement would be "Learn more" or "Learn More."
  • It is acceptable to capitalize an entire word if it is a title introducing the content type, such as "VIDEO:" or "PHOTOS:", or if it is a trademarked brand name, an acronym, or a common abbreviation, such as "NASA."
• Always capitalize the first letter of the headline.

Incorrect Grammar

• Observe correct verb tenses, subject-verb agreements, and spelling
• Use correct spacing (e.g. no missing or excessive spaces between words or punctuation)

Excessive Punctuation & Symbols

• Refrain from inappropriate, aggressive, or tasteless punctuation in headlines
• Do not use periods at the end of headlines
• Repeated punctuation (i.e. “?!?!”) or symbols are not permitted
• The use of emojis of any kind is prohibited in the titles.

The following is required:

Source Names

• Disclosure regarding the content's landing page
• If the advertiser is not the owner the content's landing page, the name of the advertiser and the content's landing page is required in the source name

Landing Page Guidelines

Advertising Policies

Clear Disclosure Required:

• “Advertisement” or “Advertorial” must appear clearly and prominently at the top of applicable pages. Disclosures must appear in a placement, color, and font size that is easily read by a reader
• Affiliate marketing sites must clearly disclose any financial relationship between the site and sponsoring advertiser in accordance with governing guidelines

No Excessive Overlays or Pop-Ups:

• A user must be able to easily close any popup advertisements or overlays that appear in connection with the landing page

No Misleading Advertising Techniques:

• Fake testimonials
• Fake comments
• “Too good to be true” statements or unsubstantiated claims
• Fake social media icons
• Fake navigation or text/images that make a user think that it is a larger editorial site
• Fake site logos
• Auto refreshing date stamps to the current date
• False 3rd party endorsements by celebrities or others
• False rumors about any person/celebrity
• Scare tactics to encourage users to take a specific action
• Countdown clocks that make a user think the offer expires (when it doesn’t)
• Video player icons that seem to play on the landing page, but instead lead to a different URL. If a video appears to play on the landing page, it must do so, and with proper functionality (including pause and mute buttons, as well as a visual indication of the video's length)

Required

• Privacy Policy link
• Contact Us link/section (for Advertorials/Affiliates)
  • Contact us section- All landing pages promoting the same of a product should have a "contact us" section with an actual email address. An empty form to email the site owners that offer no information is not enough. Financial landing pages should include an actual physical address.
• Landing pages that are promoted in Germany must include an Impressum (imprint) as required by the German Telemediengesetz (TMD).

Authenticity

• Content cannot be copied from another site or violate copyrights. Any plagiarized content without clear disclosure of authorship will not be allowed.
• Content should not include trademarks or logos that are confusingly similar in design to that of third parties
• Links in content must be labeled accurately and must link to the page or pages reasonably expected by the reader

Competitor Widgets

• Additional sites may also be required to display the Outbrain widget for all Outbrain referring traffic

Timeliness

• Content must be current and feature up-to-date information

Page Format

• Landing page must not be a PDF

Image Guidelines

Thumbnail Images (Including Cartoons or Animations) Cannot Include:

• Nudity or sexual imagery
• Weapons
• Drugs or drug paraphernalia
• Imagery that is designed to provoke, offend, or shock
• Circles or Arrows placed to highlight a specific part of the image
• Violence, gore, or dead bodies
• Graphic images of physical deformities or health conditions
• Zoomed in body parts
• Profanity, offensive, or sexually suggestive text
• Before/After Photos
• Politicians/Celebrities for Product Endorsement
• Political or Religious Symbols
• Symbols or Imagery of Hate Speech

Quality & Appearance

• All images must be relevant to the linked content
• Images must be good quality
• Images must be clear, recognizable, and properly oriented
• Images that have been altered with Photoshop or other graphic editing softwares will not be permitted
• GIFs are not permitted
• Images must not include a video player icon

Misleading Images

• Images cannot employ deceptive practices to entice a user to click. These include:
  • Images that pretend to be a system or site warning
  • Images that use sensational tactics that are not relevant to the source material

RevContent

Headline - Un-Approved Characters

• Inappropriate or improper punctuation in headlines such as repeated punctuation (???!!!) or symbols (-->, @, *, etc) are not allowed  
• Periods and ellipses are not allowed at the end of headlines  
• Headline - Misspelling(s)  
• Headline - Capitalized Letters  The first letter of all major words should be capitalized (ex. The World’s Scariest Roller Coasters)  
• Headlines and individual words cannot be in ALL CAPS       (exception: Acronyms such as NASA)  
• All words in the campaign headline must have correct spelling and grammar

Additional Headlines Restrictions  

• No use of the word "shocking" or any of its derivatives  
• No use of the word “trick” for nutraceutical, finance, or lottery offers  
• No use of the word “breakthrough” relating to weight loss, diabetes, alzheimer's, or any other serious diseases  
• No false, misleading, or deceptive claims of any kind.
• All statements made in headlines MUST be substantiated.

Inaccurate Content Branding

• Content branding must list either the landing page branding or the offer branding. 
• For brand name styling:  The first letter of all major words must be capitalized. The brand name should not contain symbols or punctuation (including dashes)

URL Does Not Resolve

• A campaign must click through to a working landing page. 

Ad Content/Landing Page Mismatch

• Ad content must match your landing page.   (ex. Content about the world’s best travel destinations cannot click through to a lander about the best turkey chili recipes.)
• The content type should match the setup of your landing page in order for it to deliver properly. Accepted content types are Article,Video and Mobile App.

Image Quality

•  Image specs are 420 X 315 pixels (or an upscaled increment of that, following a 4:3 ratio)  
• Images must fill the entire space allotted for creative (no white space along any sides)  
• Image cannot have a border or partial border  
• Image cannot have text in the creative  
• Image cannot be blurry or pixelated  
• Image cannot have animation or flashing
• The image with white space around it would be not permitted
• The image with the border would be not permitted
• The image with text overlaying it would not be permitted
• The blurry image would not be permitted; images should be high quality
• The image with the animation would be not permitted  

Additional Image Restrictions

• Zoomed in body parts  Before and after images that imply results from a product  Sexually implicit images of women

Examples Include:

Adult/Inappropriate Ad Copy Headline/Image  

• Implied or overt nudity  
• Phallic shaped objects (in or near mouth)  
• Body Paint images  
• Images of people or animals with implied or explicit sexual activity  
• Excessive cleavage or provocative positions  
• Photo-shopping to enhance sexuality  
• PDA (not aggressive and no groping)  
• Vulgar or crude language  
• Correctly fitting yoga pants  
• Some undergarments (must fully cover and not be see through)  
• Bikinis (must fully cover and be relevant to niche)   
• These images include a person in a sexually suggestive position are overtly sexual and are not permitted  
• This image suggests sexual activity and is not permitted   
• These images include phallic shaped objects, are sexually provocative or suggestive and are not permitted

Text Only Ads

• An ad must include a campaign headline and related image that meets our Image Quality guidelines.

Excessive Content Submission

• In order to expedite content approvals - Revcontent reserves the right to deny content for over submission within boosts and accounts. Best practice is to limit your creatives to five image/headlines per boost.

Taboola

The official page for Taboola details the rejection reasons and how to resolve most of their related issues.

Taboola aims to approve campaigns within 1 business day from submission. Taboola utilizes multiple methods, including manual and technical processes, to review campaigns. Landing pages are also checked for compliance.

Thumbnail - Low Resolution

• This means the thumbnail is a low quality image. Your thumbnail size must a have a minimum width of 600px and a minimum length of 500px.

Thumbnail - Misleading

• This means at least one of your thumbnails does not accurately reflect what is on the corresponding landing page.
• Example: Your thumbnail contains an image of a dog, but the content of your landing page is about cats.

Thumbnail - Policy Violation

• This means at least one of your thumbnails is in violation of one of our policies.
• Example: Your campaign is about weight loss, and your thumbnail is a side-by-side of the same person both before they lost weight and after they lost weight.

Title - Misleading

• This means that at least one of your titles does not reflect what is on the corresponding landing page.
• Example: Your title is “25 Beautiful Beach Destinations” and your landing page is the first page in an image gallery of 10 beaches.

Title - Grammar Issues

• This means that at least one of your titles has a grammar issue that needs to be fixed.
• Example: You submitted a title that is in all capital letters.

Title - Policy Violation

• This means that at least one of your titles is in violation of one of our other policies

Landing Page - Misleading

• This means that there are false, misleading, or deceptive claims on your landing page. These types of claims are not allowed, even if they are implied rather than expressly made.
• Example: There is a countdown timer that claims the user has limited time left to make the purchase or else the opportunity will no longer exist.

Landing Page - Third Party Violation

• This means that there is third party content on your landing page that is non-compliant. All third party content on your landing page must comply with our advertising policies.
• All advertisements and other third-party content must disclose that they are advertisements (if it is not otherwise obvious), and, where appropriate, they must contain branding text that discloses the source or provider of any promoted content, products or services.Example: You submitted a landing page with a widget that does not have a disclosure that it contains sponsored content, and that does not have branding text.

Landing Page - User Experience Issues

• This means the landing page is providing a poor user experience for visitors. This can range from too many advertisement pop ups to incorrectly labeled hyperlinks.
• Example: You submitted a landing page that contains several spelling errors and is generally hard for the reader to understand due to language issues.

Landing Page - Policy Violation

• This means your landing page is in violation of one of our policies.

Prohibited Content, Products, or Services

• This means part or all of your campaign items include the promotion of a prohibited product or service. This applies to your titles, thumbnails, and landing pages.
• Example: Your landing page contains services offering to facilitate sexual encounters.

Law Violation

• This means part or all of your campaign items include the promotion of something that is illegal. This applies to your titles, thumbnails, and landing pages.
• Example: Your landing page promotes the sale of illegal drugs.

Restricted Content, Products, Or Services

• This means at least one of your campaign items promotes content, products or services that don’t follow the restrictions necessary to run it.
• Example: Your campaign promotes gambling content in a country that is not allowed under our Gambling and Gaming Policy

Language Mismatch

• This means that there is a mismatch between the language used in your title or thumbnail and that used in your landing page text.
• Example: You submitted a campaign that has French titles and a landing page that is in Portuguese.

Broken URL

• This means there is a technical issue with your destination URL or landing page. For example, your landing page did not load upon click so it was not able to be reviewed.
• Example: When the review team looks at your landing page, they get a 404 error.

Zero Campaign Items In Campaign

• This means that your submitted campaign did not have any campaign items in it. 
• Example: You successfully set up a new campaign, but have not yet added any items.

Does Not Confirm With Campaign Profile

• This means at least one of your campaign items does not match the current campaign quality rating. All campaigns are reviewed by our content review team and, if set live, are given a quality rating. This quality rating ensures we are showing the appropriate content based on traffic source and other factors. You can learn more about quality ratings here.

General Policy

• This means that it has been determined that your content is not something that can be promoted by our network. Taboola Reserves the right to reject content at its sole discretion.