France : AFMM’s journey towards transparency continues

 

AFMM stresses the need for Content Providers to control their flow by banning affiliate practices and requesting to use monitoring solutions. the landing pages revision will see the price band dispensary and the tariff brought CLOSE to the cta button.

 

Content Providers are responsible and must be easily identified

After tackling the Content Locking issue last fall, the AFMM strengthens its will to ban any type of affiliate traffic on the market. The last updated rules regarding the promotion of services resolutely make the Content Providers entirely liable for their advertising.

This is especially emphasized in a new section in the Charter: “Case of affiliation”. Sales remuneration model and multiplication of intermediaries are now explicitly prohibited, and the content provider must “be able to guarantee that it has validated all the creative elements”.

The Association encourages Content Providers to use controlled traffic sources such as Google, media, AdExchange and DSP or direct purchases. It also reminds them that direct buy “does not exonerate the Publisher from implementing monitoring solutions”.

New standard aim at more easy-to-read key information for October

The biggest immediate change this year, after the homogenization of the payment pages would however be the landing page revision. The price band is disappearing and the tariff details are now brought close to the CTA button (the “Link”) clicked to access the Payment page.

The rules detail the price’s placement and format rather thoroughly, as well as the “Link” which has now to match several criteria. Exotic buttons are now prohibited, only square or rectangles are admitted. Same goes with backgrounds which must be uniform in colour, font with only Arial admitted for the explanatory mention and price, and those items’ sizes as well detailed in the charter. Moreover, the AFMM has set mandatory wording for the explanatory mention within the link, banning symbols and the “OK” we can see on so many French landing pages today.

Already very strict and sensitive, the AFMM doesn’t seem willing to relax its standards for the French market. Two services suspensions this summer and the switch to OTP flow for the biggest services on Bouygues this September make a rather tense context in which the association asserts once more that only good players will be allowed to thrive.