Programme Restrictions
Unless explicitly authorised otherwise by Advertiser, the following Programme restrictions apply:
- Affiliates are not permitted to purchase, own or bid on any domain names with the word ‘Advertiser’ or misspellings of ‘Ad vertiser’ in the URL. For example, www.Advertiser.com.
- Affiliates must not include Advertiser Brand Terms, or misspelt variations of the same, in the sub-domain of their website’s URL. For example, http://Advertiser.affiliate.com.
- Affiliates may use correctly spelt Advertiser Brand Terms after the domain of their website’s URL. For example, http://www.affiliate.com/Advertiser.
- Affiliates are not allowed to register the brand Advertiser or any variation of it on any social media platform. This includes and does not limit to brand + generic word or sentence as well generic word or sentence + brand. Any attempt to register such social media accounts will be a direct breach of the Awin terms and conditions, in particular section 7. Intellectual Property Rights of the Awin code of conduct.
- Affiliates must not post on any official Advertiser social media platform in order to attempt to drive visitors to their webpage. Advertiser social media platforms include Facebook and Twitter.
- Direct linking to Advertiser websites from paid social media is prohibited.
Any affiliates, subnetworks and/or affiliates of subnetworks who do not abide by these rules risk having their commissions set to zero and possible suspension.
PPC Policy
Commissions will not be paid where there is evidence of any paid search activity on brand terms without prior authorisation. This includes permutations, misspellings and broad matches containing brand terms (generic is fine).
PPC bidding restrictions also apply on Google Shopping/CSS (Comparison Shopping Service). We request the brand keywords stated below to be excluded from all CSS activity.
Restrictions include, but are not limited to the following:
Advertiser
Ad vertiser
Advertiser.com
www.Advertiser.com
Advertiser vouchers
Advertiser.com Vouchers
Advertiser codes
Advertiser Voucher Codes
Advertiser discount codes
Advertiser.com codes
Please do not use the word ‘official’ in your advertisements.
We are happy for affiliates to bid on generic terms, however direct linking is prohibited. Any affiliates who do not abide by these rules do risk having their commissions set to zero and possible suspension.
CSS
Standard shopping to be used by CSS partners only for all THG programmes and ensure brand terms are negatived as per THG Group agreement
Performance Max should not be booked at all for any THG programmes and could result in zero commission and suspension from the programme if found to be used for THG
Discount codes
Advertiser encourages affiliates to contact us for exclusive voucher/discount codes and additional incentives.
Affiliates may only promote codes that are provided through the Advertiser affiliate programme (either through our account or directly from Advertiser’s Affiliate Manager).
Advertiser reserves the right to withhold payment of commission if unauthorised voucher codes are used in an affiliate sale. We appreciate that consumers may use voucher codes that they have found via a site other than that which is awarded the sale and this will be investigated before decisions on commission payment are made. Any affiliate found to be displaying unauthorised codes may also have their commission set to zero until the code(s) are removed.
Where voucher codes are issued with an expiry date this should be clearly displayed, and codes should be removed or explicitly marked as expired after this due date unless you are advised otherwise. Any affiliates displaying expired codes without marking them as being expired may be suspended from the programme. Please also ensure that you observe IAB voucher code best practice guidelines.
De-duplication Policy
All affiliate sales are de-duplicated against other online advertising channels using a local cookie on the merchant platform. De-duplication channels include:
PPC Brand
PPC Generic
Email Advertising
Direct Partnerships
Price Comparison
Display & retargeting advertising
Other Affiliate Networks
In house referrer scheme (further details on this can be found below)
The In House Referrer Scheme
Existing customers who have already purchased from The Hut Group will be sent an email explaining the referral scheme and how they can earn credit from driving new customers to the site.
For example:
Existing customer logs into their account on Advertiser and goes to referral section.
Existing customer creates link to Advertiser to share on social media.
New customer clicks on that link and makes first purchase on Advertiser either by entering referral code at checkout or after an automatic discount has been applied after clicking on a referral link.
Existing customer receives credit to spend on Advertiser as a reward.
All referral sales will be de-duped against affiliate sales and there will be a slight change to the usual last-click method of tracking in certain circumstances:
If a new customer uses a referral code or link then clicks an affiliate link (within 30 minutes of the first click), this sale will be attributed to the referral scheme
If an affiliate link is used 30 minutes or more after the referral link is clicked and no referrer code is redeemed then the affiliate will still be awarded the last click and receive commission for this sale
Note: Whenever a referrer code is used, the sale will not track via affiliates.
Social Content Creators
All affiliate content on social media must be ASA compliant, read the ASA Guide here. If you wish to use affiliate links within your Instagram Stories and other social channels, use #ad as a valid identifier to be ASA compliant.
Awin has a one-page website - Paid for Advertising - which explains how free content can have a commercial relationship attached to it. This can be linked to by any affiliate in order to make your readers aware of how affiliate links work. If you have any questions on this please speak to your account contact. More information here: https://www.awin.com/gb/news-and-events/industry-news/affiliate-links-on-instagram-stories.
Cookieless Vouchercode Tracking
Advertiser uses cookie-less voucher tracking for some of our influencer partners. This means that the transaction is always attributed to the publisher who is given the exclusive voucher. When the voucher is used, transactions will be tracked regardless of whether a click has happened or not. Please speak to your account contact for more information.
Validation Policy
Advertiser validates in-line with their returns policy which is 28 days with a look back window 31 days.
CSS
Only standard shopping activity to be used by CSS partners with brand terms negatively matched in adherence to program terms. Performance Max activity should not be set up and could result in 0 commission and suspension from the programme if this activity is found in place.
Any queries may be addressed to the network or the specific programme contact.
