The affiliate industry is seeing a growth in both regulation and legal cases pertaining to a lack of advertising disclosure be that on social media or publisher websites. Awin felt that there was no clear solution that would help publishers display diclosure only when required and so created adMission as a universal disclosure tool that gives publishers that control over disclosure for any link, not just those from Awin.

Although regulation and advice differs depending on country, Awin found some common themes that could be solved – page level disclosure and link level disclosure. Link level disclosure can be easily added and modified through the Awin UI, however, in order to display page level disclosure there is a little bit more work to do. Awin has a wiki guide for installation and we are going to take a detailed look here.

In the Publisher MasterTag page of the Awin UI, there is a cog next to the entry for adMission publisher disclosure. Clicking this brings up the settings.

You can add any link suffix disclosure you like, in this case I have chosen *. Within the settings you can also activate page level disclosure, although this requires a little more work. Clicking the SEO Disclosure box adds rel=”sponsored” to all affiliate links and the Monetised Domains box is where you add the domains of your affiliate networks or monetisation partners, there is no restriction the links that can be added here.

With that saved, link level disclosure will be displayed on all links that point to the Monetised Domains.

In order to display a page level disclosure we need to edit our WordPress template and add the following where we want our disclosure message to appear:

<div id=”awin-disclosure-plugin” style=”display:none”>Insert disclosure message here.</div>

If you are unfamiliar with HTML then it can be a little bit of trial and error to get it exactly right. In the following example I have added the code at the bottom of the template of header.php. You may prefer to add this in to a different position or even into another element such as at the top of any page or blog templates. The important thing is to make sure this has been added to a template that will be used whenever an affiliate link is used. As the header is used across all pages and is at the top of the page I think it is the easiest choice.

This is an affiliate link to Fragrance Direct using the standard Awin tracking link. adMission has automatically appending the tracking links with the link suffix disclosure we defined in the Awin interface.

To make the plugin match the style of your website, additional CSS must be added. This can be done through the Design menu under Custom CSS. You can style the message however you like.

For this site I have used the following custom CSS:

#awin-disclosure-plugin {

      font-size: 16px;

      margin: auto;

      padding-top: 15px;

      text-align: center;

      width: 1172px;

      color: #000000;

      background-color: #ffffff;

}

If you are unfamiliar with CSS then there are plenty of resources available online to help with your styling. As long as you stick to the layout above then you can add any number of additional elements.

The attributes are fairly self explanatory, but if you imagine that the div we inserted with our custom disclosure message is a box, we are telling the site how to display that box. I have set the font size and margin and have also introduced some padding at the top of the box to create some space. The text is aligned to the left of the box and the width of the box has also been set. Finally I have set the font colour and the background colour. There are plenty of colour converters online that will help you find the right hex colour codes for your site.

Local regulatory information

UK:

https://www.gov.uk/marketing-advertising-law/regulations-that-affect-advertising

https://www.asa.org.uk/advice-online/affiliate-marketing.html

US:

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2017/04/ftc-staff-reminds-influencers-brands-clearly-disclose

https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/plain-language/bus41-dot-com-disclosures-information-about-online-advertising.pdf

Canada:

http://adstandards.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Influencer-Marketing-Steering-Committee-Disclosure-Guidelines-Jan-2019.pdf

Germany:

https://www.it-recht-kanzlei.de/influencer-werbung-faq.html

Australia:

https://aana.com.au/self-regulation/codes-guidelines/

Benelux:

https://www.reclamecode.nl/nrc/

France:

https://www.arpp.org/nous-consulter/regles/regles-de-deontologie/digital-advertising-and-marketing-communications-code/#toc_1_3

https://www.arpp.org/actualite/marketing-influence-marques-regles-de-transparence/

Italy:

http://www.codicedelconsumo.it/english-version/

https://www.iap.it/codice-e-altre-fonti/il-codice/

https://www.iap.it/social-network-e-content-sharing/

Poland:

https://www.whitepress.pl/baza-wiedzy/597/rozliczenie-z-influencerem-%E2%80%93-kwestie-podatkowe

Spain:

https://iabspain.es/estudio/guia-legal-marketing-de-influencers/

 

Awin’s legal disclaimer for adMission:

Use of adMission does not guarantee a publisher’s compliance with its obligations under applicable law or advertising standards or under any agreements that the publisher has with Awin, nor does it preclude Awin from enforcing those obligations. To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, adMission is provided without any warranty whatsoever as to its accuracy or fitness for purpose. Awin disclaims all liability in connection with adMission howsoever arising. By making use of the adMission disclosure tool, you acknowledge to Awin that you understand and accept this disclaimer.