Hi all,

As you will know, AffiliateFuture are signed up to the IAB Voucher Code Guidelines that came into effect on 1st January 2009.   Since the guidelines came into play the majority of affiliates have met these and taken them in the spirit that they were issued and only one affiliate has so far been temporarily removed from all the participating networks.

It has been necasary to make some clarifications on the guidelines – none of which should effect the Affiliates who are currently compliant.

Here are the ammended guidelines in full

The aim of the IAB’s affiliate marketing council code of best practice for voucher code sites is to ensure that traffic from affiliate sites sent to merchants is not done in a misleading or confusing way and that consumers receive a good user experience. To this end all of the undersigned networks are committed to enforcing the following guidelines:

1.       Affiliates must not use a mechanism whereby users are encouraged to click to interact with content where it is unclear or confusing what the outcome will be. For example:

i) Using “click to reveal code” and opening the site when no valid code is present or an offer/deal/sale is presented instead, without this being made clear before the click.

ii) Using “click to copy code” and opening the site when no valid code is available

iii) Opening the merchant’s site without making it clear that this will occur

2.       Voucher code affiliates must clearly detail the nature of the voucher or offer/deal/sale before a user clicks to interact with it (by revealing, copying, visiting the merchant site etc)

3.       A valid code is defined as a code that has been legitimately issued by a merchant for your use online. This code will have an activation date and, where provided, a deactivation date. When a code has expired it must either be removed or the fact that it has expired must be clearly stated in writing, not simply by listing the expiry date.

4.       Sites displaying voucher codes must contain clear categorization and separation between deals/offers/sales and voucher codes.

5.       Any affiliate judged by one of the participating networks to be contravening the code will be referred to the IAB’s Affiliate Marketing Council and all members will agree on a course of action. The discretion of the council will be used when determining what is judged as misleading or confusing and is not confined to the examples above.

If you have any questions about this please feel free to get in touch with us via emailing enquiries@affiliatefuture.co.uk