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.
adMission settings and activation
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.
Displaying page-level disclosure
In order to display a page level disclosure we need to add the following custom code in to the body:
<div id="awin-disclosure-plugin" style="display:none">Insert disclosure message here.</div>
To add custom code you need to navigate to your Wix Dashboard, click Settings and then scroll down to Custom Code found in the Advanced Section.
The code should be inserted in the Body - Start section. It should be set to load on each new page and marked as essential code.
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.
Styling the page level disclosure
To make the plugin match the style of your website, additional CSS must be added. This can be done by adding more custom code alongside the adMission code. You can style the message however you like.
For this site I added the following custom CSS to be loaded on every page as essential code:
<style>
#awin-disclosure-plugin {
font-size: 16px;
margin: auto;
padding-top: 15px;
text-align: center;
width: 1172px;
color: #000000;
background-color: #ffffff;
}
</style>
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:
Canada:
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/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.