The Clerk of the Circuit Court – Advertising Acceptance Guidelines

Below is a summary of the Office of the Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County (“Clerk’s Office”) advertising acceptance guidelines.

It is the intent of the Clerk’s Office to offer the opportunity to advertise only to advertisers who meet the Office’s Internet Advertisement Policy Guidelines, regardless of age, sex, ethnic origin, gender or other factors. The Clerk’s Office will review potential advertisers and advertising content in order to ensure that no appearance of endorsement by the Clerk’s Office is created.

No advertisements or links to sites containing inappropriate material will be accepted. The Clerk of the Circuit Court reserves the right to deny any and all requests for inclusion of inappropriate advertisements on the website. In addition, the Clerk of the Circuit Court reserves the right of removal of any inappropriate link and/or advertisement from the website.

Inappropriate material includes but is not limited to the following:

• Unauthorized or unapproved use of the Clerk’s Office advertisement assets (such as, talent, logos, characters, etc.),
• Pornography advertisements, including but not limited to any site selling, showing, linking, offering for free or otherwise, sex related matters in any medium and/or media, products or services that include massage parlors, escort services and/or matters with sexual overtones,
• Potentially slanderous or libelous content,
• Bad language, body parts, proxies for bad language,
• Indecent language or behavior,
• Gambling,
• Hostility or violence,
• Illegal discrimination of any group,
• Attacks considered ethnic, racial, sexual, or religious,
• Harmful to children, emotionally or physically.
• Alcoholic beverages,
• Tobacco products,
• Inherently dangerous products,
• Advertisements and/or links for products and/or services that violate the law,
• Advertising that is false, misleading, deceptive and/or offensive to the moral standards of the community, or contrary to good taste,
• Advertising which might be contrary to the best interests of the organization, its departments, appointed and elected officials, respectively, states or suggests that proponents or opponents of the persons or measures advertised are vulgar, greedy, immoral, monopolistic, illegal or unfair,
• Political advertising,
• Involve or refer to political, religious, moral or environmental issues subject to public debate,
• Any information that would subject the website to be a public forum,
• Links to sites that contain malicious software that may be uploaded and/or downloaded to the internet user’s computer, including but not limited to spyware, adware, malicious pop-ups, and/or viruses. Non-malicious “Cookies”, a very small text document that often includes anonymous unique identifiers, are accepted.

TRUTH IN ADVERTISING

The Clerk’s Office reserves the right to reject or to suspend any advertisement that is deemed by the Clerk, in his/her sole discretion or is reported to negatively affect user experience or is disruptive to the user’s experience with the site.

• The advertising content must be clearly identifiable as an advertisement.
• The advertiser must fulfill the advertised offer as stated in the advertisement, including without limitation, not altering any offer periods, product offers or prices that are stated in the advertisement unless advertiser has obtained the Clerk’s Office’s prior approval.
• Advertisements cannot mislead the user. For example, they may not mimic or resemble Windows/Mac/Unix dialog boxes, error messages, or the like.
• Advertisements cannot resemble http://www.cookcountyclerkofcourt.org/ content.
• Advertisements cannot solicit or collect, or appear to solicit or collect, any personally identifiable information from http://www.cookcountyclerkofcourt.org/ visitors without their knowledge.
• Advertisements cannot contain graphics that simulate interactivity (i.e. Dropdown menus, search boxes etc.).
• Advertisements cannot mimic news headlines in design, tone, third person sentence structure, or topic.
• Audio events:
  • Must be initiated by user click
  • Must include a clearly labeled button or link to stop audio
  • Audio clips cannot loop
  • Additional specifications that amend or supersede these general guidelines may apply for individual ad products.

TECHNICAL PROHIBITIONS: Click-through URLs and third-party code

• After clicking on any ad unit, users must be able to return to cookcountyclerkofcourt.org by clicking on the browser’s back button.
• Any destination URLs that result in a trap door effect (i.e. The user cannot return to http://www.cookcountyclerkofcourt.org/ by clicking the browser's "back" button), are not permitted.
• User clicks cannot launch stand-alone video/audio players or otherwise display content outside the standard browser window.
• User clicks on advertisement may not result in the launch of multiple browser windows.
• Advertisement cannot launch windows when served.
• Advertisement can launch a new browser window upon user click.
• All advertisements, including any javascript and/or tracking code, placed on any online properties of the Clerk of the Court must be served from a secure location/server. Otherwise, the Clerk’s Office reserves the right not to place the campaign, due to security reasons.
• The advertiser’s site must follow industry best standards on privacy policies.

IAB STANDARDS (Internet Advertising Bureau, IAB.net)

• Advertising must comply with the standards established by the Internet Advertising Bureau, among other requirements stated in this guideline.
• Additional specifications that amend or supersede these general guidelines may apply for individual ad products.

ACCEPTABLE ENTITIES

Acceptable advertising entities include but are not limited to:

• Government Agencies; Academic Institutions; Public-Private Partnerships;
• Professional, Cultural, Community-Based and Non-Profit Organizations
• Advertisements from commercial and/or non-commercial entities not contrary to the intent of these guidelines.