Pontiac Intelligence reserves the right to reject any Creative unit at its discretion, and subsequently suspend the account without advanced warning. If your account is suspended, you will be notified in writing and an investigation will take place within three business days. Audit results can only be changed by resolving the issue that caused a Creative to be rejected or flagged as sensitive.

Audit Status

Creative audit results will be displayed under ‘Audit Status’ next to the name of the Creative, in the ‘Creatives’ section of the Advertiser, Campaign or Line. Audit status will be indicated by a symbol; a yellow triangle for ‘pending’ audit, a green check box for ‘approved’, a green triangle for ‘marked as sensitive’ and a red box for ‘rejected’. Hover over this symbol to view additional information about the audit status.

At the Advertiser, Campaign, and Line levels, the Creatives table displays all creatives associated with that level, along with their current audit status.

When a creative is rejected, users can hover over the Audit Status to view the rejection reason. This allows users to quickly understand why the creative did not pass audit.

In the Creative audit process, all ad units uploaded to the Pontiac platform will be assigned an IAB category and a brand using the Advertiser’s web domain or click URL if applicable. Both parameters are used by the publishers in the bid request to control the types of ads.

The IAB category assigned to your creative can be found by clicking on the creative name to open the creative details window. This field is displayed below the creative in the ‘Creative Category’ field:

These categories come from the Open RTB Specs, that can be found here in table 5.1 ‘Content Categories’: Open RTB Specs v2.5

If you believe the incorrect IAB category has been assigned to your creative, create a ticket in the Help Center for assistance.

Creatives that are flagged as ‘Sensitive’ will display a green triangle in the ‘Audit status’ column. Hover over this symbol to review the sensitive category the creative was assigned to. You can also see the category and sensitive attributes by opening the creative window. These are also displayed under the preview of the creative:

Permitted Sensitive Categories by Deals

Sensitive creatives will only be allowed to run on the platform through deals that explicitly accept content in the specified sensitive category. In the ‘Deals’ section of the ‘Inventory tab’ there is a column that lists sensitive categories that are accepted on each deal.

For inquiries regarding inventory that may be available for a sensitive category search here or reach out to our team through the Help Center.

List of Allowed Sensitive Categories

The following sensitive categories are allowed on the Pontiac platform, but ads will be restricted to deals, exchanges, and publishers or venues that have explicitly approved this content. Pontiac makes no guarantee that inventory will be available for any of the following categories or that creatives will be approved by SSP or publisher partners. As a platform user, it is your sole responsibility to ensure compliance with all applicable local and national laws, restrictions, or regulations, including licensing and/or registration and targeting requirements in each market where the content is serving.

• Political
• Gambling
• Religion
• Pharma
• Liquor
• Beer & Wine
• Cannabis
• CBD
• Tobacco
• Firearms & Weapons
• Lawyer Advertising

Political

Political advertisements require additional actions as prompted within the platform. When creating an Advertiser ensure that for the Politicial Content field: Yes, I am running ads related to an election, ballot initiative, or political candidate in the United States is selected and the following information is filled out.

Cannabis

Index Exchange has the following cannabis specific creative guidelines. Cannabis ads are required to meet the following standards to be eligible to participate on the exchange. Their specialized quality control team will review all cannabis ads against these standards, and will reject any advertisements that contain prohibited content.

Cannabis-related advertisements are prohibited from containing the following content:

• Depictions or promotion of underage consumption of cannabis
• False, misleading or deceptive content
• Medical claims;
• Depictions or promotion of excessive consumption
• A design, representation, picture or illustration that is obscene or indecent

Applicable laws, rules, and regulations may vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Each Advertiser is responsible for ensuring compliance with the laws, rules and regulations of the jurisdictions in which it chooses to serve cannabis-related advertisements.

Lawyer Advertising

This sensitive category is blocked by Paramount and NBC.

All Political Creatives must run under an Advertiser with the ‘Political’ box checked and the disclosure form completed. If the disclosure form has not been filled out and a creative is marked as political in the audit, the Advertiser and all associated Campaigns will be disabled until the required information has been entered.

Pontiac Intelligence permits political advertising on the Bidder platform (advertising relating to elections, ballot initiatives, or political candidates) in the United States, but requires that such advertising comply with applicable law. We also require that you certify certain information about the ads and the political organization that purchased them for certain political advertising on the state or local level, as legally required.

All necessary information must be entered directly into the Pontiac platform when creating the Advertiser. The platform will guide you through a series of questions. The below exemplifies the nature of the information that must be provided, but is subject to change. Failure to supply all applicable information into the platform could prevent your ads from serving.

Political creatives will only be allowed to run on the platform through deals that explicitly accept political content. Depending on the Partner or Publishers, there may also be additional creative approval processes in order to run on these deals.

This information can be found in the ‘Deals’ section of the Inventory Tab. Deals that allow political content will have ‘Political’ listed in the ‘Permitted Sensitive Categories’. If additional publisher approvals are required, this will be noted in the ‘Publisher Approval Required’ field. To request publisher approval for a deal, reach out through the Help Center.

The following content is prohibited across all Pontiac products. Any ad unit flagged under one of these categories will be blocked from serving on the platform and may result in account suspension or forfeiture.

• Profanity, Hate Speech or Defamatory Language
• Graphic or excessive violence
• Pornography, Nudity, Obscenities, or other ‘Adult’ Content
• Inappropriate content (at our discretion)
• Sale of, or instructions for creating, guns, bombs, ammunition, or weapons
• Discussing or promoting sale of federally illegal drugs, including marijuana, illegal pharmaceuticals, and other schedule 1 drugs.
• Malware, privacy and security violations
• Broken Ads or blank creative
• Enabling or Permitting Piracy
• Charging for government forms and services
• Misappropriation of Copyright, Trademark, Trade Secret, or Patent
• Executes or Downloads Files without User Interactions
• Causing degradation of site performance (ex: excessive animation, weight)
• Illegal Material or Content
• Misleading or sensationalized messaging, content, or images
• Pop ups or any ad or landing pages that spawn them.
• Content that intends to, or does, induce user action through misleading appearance or behavior, including, but not limited to, creatives that mimic video players, functional buttons, errors or warnings about viruses, missing codecs, and corrupt disks.
• Displaying fake errors to induce user action, or messaging that implies knowledge of a user’s computer or operating system.
• Creatives must not rotate brands or advertisers.
• The landing page must match brand of the advertisement.
• The landing page must contain a privacy policy.

All creatives uploaded to the CTV platform, and advertiser landing pages when applicable, are subject to the Pontiac audit process. This process may take up to 1 business day and Pontiac reserves the right to deny any creative, even if they are compliant with listed standards and policies. Any ads deemed malicious or inappropriate at Pontiac’s discretion will result in your account being suspended.