AppLovin Policies for Publishers (Prior – March 2024)

Overview

Effective: March 25, 2024

Introduction*

When you use the Services, including the AppLovin software development kit (the “SDK”), applications programming interfaces, pixels, documentation, tools and assemblies, libraries, scripts, object code, sample source code, and similar developer material made available by AppLovin (collectively the “Software” as further defined in the EULA), as a Publisher (“you” or “your”), you must adhere to these AppLovin Policies for Publishers (the “Policies”).  These Policies apply in addition to any other policies or agreements governing your use of the Services, including the AppLovin Terms of Use Agreement.

AppLovin seeks to create a safe, fair, and transparent ecosystem for publishers to monetize their content and for advertisers to reach prospective customers with useful, relevant products and services.  Maintaining trust in the ads ecosystem and preserving the reputation and credibility of AppLovin, the Services, and those that use the Services, require setting minimum standards for publishers seeking to use the Services.  

AppLovin may update these Policies at any time by posting the updated version on the AppLovin website.  If an update includes material changes, AppLovin will provide notice via email.  By continuing to use the Services, you agree to the updated Policies.

Contents

General Compliance Obligations

Your business practices and data handling must comply with and not cause AppLovin to violate any applicable laws, including data protection, consumer protection, commerce, advertising, and product laws, age-related restrictions, regulatory requirements or self-regulatory guidance, intellectual property and license restrictions, any consents or disclosures required to integrate third-party technology with the Services, or any third-party contractual terms, licenses, policies, or guidelines.

Content Restrictions

The Content Restrictions applicable to your use of the Services fall into three categories:

  1. Minimum content requirements to use the Services.
  2. Content that contains prohibited content will be rejected or removed and not eligible for monetization.
  3. Content that contains restricted content may be allowed to monetize depending on the local jurisdiction in which the content appears.

AppLovin reserves the right to review and prohibit or restrict all content on a case-by-case basis.

a. Minimum Content Requirements

In order to use the Services, your Property must contain substantive, original content, and demonstrate signs of user engagement.

AppLovin does not work with any Property that:

  • Features mainly links or content from others without additional commentary, curation, or otherwise adding value to the content;
  • Contains more ads than Publisher content, or otherwise appears designed primarily to display ads;
  • Has little to no evidence of user engagement; and/or
  • Remains under construction.

b. Prohibited Content

Publishers may not use the Services to monetize any of the following prohibited content categories:

  • Illegal or illicit products, activities, or services.
  • Sexually explicit or other adult content, including pornographic or highly suggestive content or images, explicit, obscured or implied sexual acts, or explicit or implied sexual language.
  • Graphic or explicit violence, including assault/rape, injury to human beings or animals, or any acts or torture or terrorism.
  • Harassment, intimidation, bullying, excessive profanity, threats, or content that can be characterized as hate speech that advocates violence or discrimination against any group, organization, or individual.  This includes groups, organizations, or individuals identified by their race or ethnic origin, religion, disability/medical condition, age, national origin, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, political association, or any other characteristic associated with systemic discrimination or marginalization.
  • Illegal drugs, drug paraphernalia, or substance abuse.
  • Weapons and weapon accessories, including guns, gun accessories or ammunition, and explosives.
  • Content that violates or infringes upon any third-party intellectual property rights, including the sale or promotion of counterfeit products, file sharing, torrenting, or other infringing content, or content that violates or infringes any other third-party rights, including confidentiality obligations.
  • Defamatory or libelous content.
  • Content that makes misleading, deceptive, or unrealistic claims, unreliable or harmful claims, or enables dishonest behavior.  This includes things like make-money-fast schemes, chain letters, or pyramid schemes, or products or services that help users mislead others or gain unauthorized access to systems, devices, or property.
  • Content that entices engagement under false or unclear pretenses, attempts to obtain personal information unlawfully or fraudulently, or trick users into sharing personal information.
  • False or misleading news.
  • Internet abuse, including the use or distribution of viruses or spyware/malware, corrupted files, or other materials that could damage, render inoperable, or gain unauthorized access to any computer, device, network, or any of the associated data or personal information.
  • Promotion of black-hat hacking, cracking, or warez.
  • Significant unmoderated user-generated content.  This includes apps that do not have a method to moderate user-generated content, a method to report or remove any misconduct, and/or the ability to remove or block users.
  • Content or material that offers traffic generation or promotes fraudulent traffic.
  • Other forms of shocking or disturbing content, including but not limited to graphic depictions of bodily functions, or grotesque images, footage, or audio.

c. Restricted Content

Publishers may be permitted, in AppLovin’s sole discretion, to use the Services to monetize any of the following restricted content categories, provided that they strictly adhere to any country- or region-specific laws, rules, or regulations (including any age-related restrictions, licensing/certification requirements, labeling and disclaimer requirements, advertising guidelines, and any similar requirements), these Policies, and any other applicable AppLovin policies or agreements:

  • Alcohol;
  • Gambling apps or websites, including online or offline lotteries, casinos, and sports betting;
  • Political;
  • Tobacco;
  • Financial Services, investing, retirement planning, or similar;
  • Health and pharmaceutical products and services, including prescription drugs; and/or
  • Cause-based advertising.

If your Property or Properties contain or may contain any of these restricted content categories or collect or may collect from end users information about any of these restricted content categories, you must notify the AppLovin account team.

Technical Requirements and Other Standards

  • Integration/Ad Space Setup. You must correctly integrate the AppLovin SDK and any other Software as described in the AppLovin technical integration documentation available at https://dash.applovin.com/documentation/mediation and in other documentation provided by AppLovin.
  • Property Ownership.  You must either own the Property on which you display ads or have a direct, contractual relationship with the Property’s owner and be authorized to display ads.
  • Better Ads Standards.  Your Property must conform to the Better Ads Standards.  For more information about the types of disallowed ad experiences, please visit the Coalition for Better Ads.
  • Deceptive or Misleading Elements.  Your Property must not contain content, experiences, or behavior designed to be deceptive or misleading.  This includes elements like redirects to unwanted content without user action, navigation links that lead to an ad or landing page, typically non-clickable areas that lead to an ad or landing page when clicked, fake messages that lead to an ad or landing page when clicked, social engineering, browser history or settings manipulation, fake error messages or system flags, malware or unwanted software or downloads, requesting more permissions than are necessary for the proper functioning of the Property, or any other elements that attempt to trick a user into interactions, engagement, or sharing their personal information.
  • Viewability.  To ensure the authenticity of impressions or clicks, ads must be visible (i.e., not hidden or invisible, out of page, stacked, or stuffed) and placed reasonably and oriented correctly within the content.  Ads that are not visible or reasonably viewable may be considered, in AppLovin’s sole discretion, invalid activity.  For more information, please visit the AppLovin Terms of Use Agreement.
  • Final Auction for Mediation Purposes / Restrictions on Redirecting Inventory.  When you use the Services for mediation purposes in connection with a given impression, the Services serve as the final auction for that impression.  As such, once you have made an ad request for mediation through the Services, you may not redirect the impression associated with that ad request through any other auction or system that allocates ad requests based on actual or estimated pricing information.
  • VPN Apps / VPN Connections.  You may not use the Services in connection with apps that provide virtual private networks, proxy servers, or similar products or services. 
  • Audience/Authenticity.  Impressions and clicks on ads must be the result of legitimate human end user activity.  You may not artificially inflate impressions, clicks, or requests, or source traffic from pop-ups, pop-unders, forced redirects, or similar means.  AppLovin strictly prohibits invalid impressions, clicks, or requests, invalid traffic, or any other form of invalid activity, and any inducement, design, or encouragement of the same, including through the use of “robots” or “spiders” by you or any third party.  AppLovin shall determine, in AppLovin’s sole discretion, what constitutes valid impressions, clicks, and requests, valid traffic, and valid activity.  Please note that payments to you may be withheld or adjusted if you engage in any actual or suspected violation of these Policies or the AppLovin Terms of Use Agreement.
  • Safety or Security Risks.  You may not use any content, app, or activity that interferes with the operation of the Services, the normal operation of an end user’s device, or otherwise creates a safety or security risk to AppLovin, the Services, or those that use the Services, including any transmissions which may damage, interfere with, surreptitiously intercept, or expropriate any system, program, data, or personal information. Property or Properties deemed unsafe or a security risk by AppLovin or reputable third parties may be suspended without further notice in AppLovin’s sole discretion until any safety or security issues have been addressed to AppLovin’s satisfaction.
  • Transparency.  Any ad request sent via the AppLovin SDK or other Software must contain all the requisite information and characteristics of the inventory and the actual traffic source must match the disclosed traffic source.  Any request must also include any applicable Do Not Track, Limit Ad Tracking, COPPA (as defined below) flags, other age-related flags, and flags related to laws or policies of similar effect in any applicable jurisdiction, as well as other consent flags.

Third-Party SDKs or Other Software Integrations

When you integrate third-party SDKs, APIs, pixels, connections, or similar software into your Property for mediation through the Services, you create a direct relationship with the third-party provider, subject to the terms of any agreement applicable to that those integrations, connections, or software.  AppLovin has no ability to control and no responsibility for any data processing between you and the third-party provider or any other aspect of the third-party integrations, connections, or software that you choose to integrate.  You and the third-party provider must ensure compliance with all applicable laws and regulations, including those concerning privacy and data protection, as well as the collection, passing, and appropriate treatment of any end user- or device-based privacy choices or flags.

General Privacy Requirements  

You must comply with all applicable laws and regulations concerning privacy and data protection. 

  • Privacy Policy: You must have and abide by a privacy policy for each Property that complies with all applicable laws and clearly discloses any data collection, usage, and sharing. The privacy policy must also disclose that third parties, including AppLovin, may be collecting, processing, and sharing Personal Data for advertising purposes (including serving interest-based advertising and improving their advertising services), and that third-party measurement partners may be collecting and processing Personal Data as part of the Open Measurement Working Group to perform ad measurement and other services. To comply with this disclosure obligation with respect to AppLovin’s use of data, you have the option to display prominently the following language in your privacy policy: “We work with AppLovin to deliver ads in our mobile application and other devices and/or platforms. For more information about AppLovin’s collection and use of your information visit: https://applovindev.wpenginepowered.com/privacy/”.
  • Notice and Consent: You must provide visible notice to end users and where necessary obtain a valid, specific, and informed consent from end users regarding the scope of collection, use, sharing, or other processing of data by AppLovin for advertising and related purposes (including serving interest-based advertising and improving the Services, including our AI-powered technologies).

    You must correctly integrate the AppLovin SDK and any other Software and correctly collect and pass consent flag values in order to serve interest-based advertising to end users in the European Union, EFTA States, the United Kingdom, the State of California, and other locations as legally required.

    AppLovin may provide you access to impression-level data delivered through the AppLovin SDK and any other Software (“Impression Level Reporting”). If you receive Impression Level Reporting, you must obtain legally sufficient consent from your end users before combining, commingling, correlating, associating, or merging any Impression Level Reporting data with personal data or enabling or allowing a third party to, combine, commingle, correlate, associate, or merge Impression Level Reporting data with personal data in any manner that exceeds the purposes authorized by such user consent.
  • Setting Age-Related Flags: You must set appropriate age-related flag values for end users via the AppLovin SDK and any other Software, as required under any applicable laws or app store policies.  As explained below, AppLovin does not knowingly collect personal information from children or serve ads to children.
  • Honoring Privacy Choices: You must respect all end user- or device-based privacy choices made known to you, including those limiting ad tracking or age gating.
  • U.S. Multistate Privacy Choices: You are responsible for compliance with the laws of the U.S. states that have enacted comprehensive consumer privacy laws, including the California Consumer Privacy Act, the Colorado Privacy Act, the Connecticut Data Privacy Act, the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act, the Utah Consumer Privacy Act, and each of their associated regulations, as well as similar consumer privacy laws that may be enacted in the future (collectively, the “U.S. Multistate Data Protection Laws”).  If you use the Services in a way that causes AppLovin to collect personal information from residents covered by the U.S. Multistate Data Protection Laws, you must provide all notices, disclosures, and rights required by the U.S. Multistate Data Protection Laws, including by posting appropriate links to allow applicable U.S. state residents to opt out of the sale or sharing of their personal information, limit the use of their sensitive personal information, or exercise other rights.  In addition, you must correctly set “Do Not Sell” flag values (or similar flags and other appropriate or required flags) via the AppLovin SDK and any other Software. 

Prohibition on Sensitive Personal Data

  • Demographics/Interest Targeting: You may only send demographic or interest-based targeting data in the fields designated for such data, as described in the AppLovin documentation available at https://dash.applovin.com. You may not include any personal data, including demographic or interest-based targeting data, in any fields intended for contextual targeting (i.e., targeting based on the content of the app).
  • Sensitive Personal Data: You may not include in the data that you share with AppLovin any personal data about an individual’s racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical affiliation or beliefs, trade-union membership, health, sex life or sexual orientation, criminal convictions or alleged commission of an offense, genetic data, biometric data, government-issued identifiers, financial account information, account log-in credentials, the contents of user communications, precise geolocation information, or any other information that could be considered sensitive personal information under applicable laws.  You may not use any feature or functionality of the Services to send, collect, share, track, infer, or identify any sensitive categories of data.

Prohibition on Ads to and Personal Information from Children and Apps Exclusively Designed for or Exclusively Directed to Children 

You must comply with all applicable laws and policies governing the collection and use of personal information from children in any jurisdictions where you have end users.  This includes the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (“COPPA”), laws of similar effect in any applicable jurisdiction in the collection and use of “Personal Information” (as defined by COPPA or other applicable laws) from children, and any applicable app store policies. 

AppLovin does not knowingly collect personal information from children or serve ads to children.  You may not provide AppLovin with personal information from children, use the Services to serve ads to children, or use the Services for any Property that is exclusively designed for or exclusively directed to children.  Please note that, in the European Union and various other locations, applicable law generally defines children as those under the age of 18. In the United Kingdom, the State of California, and various other locations, applicable law generally defines children as those under the age of 16.  You may not use the Services to serve interest-based advertising to children as defined under applicable laws. 

If any Property within your publisher network is exclusively designed for or exclusively directed to children, or knowingly passes personal information from children, you are in violation of these Policies and the AppLovin Terms of Use Agreement and your account(s) may be subject to immediate termination. 

Miscellaneous

You may not use the Services in a manner that abuses, exploits, undermines, or otherwise disrupts the Services. 

All pricing information, including revenue share or any information that would allow a third party to ascertain revenue share, constitutes AppLovin Confidential Information. You may not disclose pricing information, except as expressly permitted by AppLovin in writing.

The highest bid may not always win an auction, such as when a buyer, seller, or AppLovin specifies requirements on bidding terms, or specifies exclusions regarding who may buy inventory. The Services allow for transactions in real time, and bids and offers may compete simultaneously against multiple other bids and offers.

AppLovin makes no guarantee regarding the level of impressions of ads, the timing of delivery of such impressions or the amount of any resulting payment to be made.

Enforcement

Any actual or suspected violation of these Policies (or any agreement governing your use of the Services, including the AppLovin Terms of Use Agreement) may result, in AppLovin’s sole discretion, in AppLovin blocking or limiting ads from appearing against your Property, the suspension or termination of your account or access to the Services, the imposition of limits on your account or access to the Services, and/or the suspension, withholding, or termination of any payments potentially owed to you.  

How to Contact Us

Please contact [email protected] with any questions regarding these Policies. 

*Capitalized terms have the meanings ascribed to them in the AppLovin Terms of Use Agreement, unless otherwise indicated.