Seznam Newsfeed Terms of Service

in force as of 15. 12. 2021

Article I. – Introductory provisions

Seznam Newsfeed is a premium service provided by Czechia’s number one search engine’s homepage www.seznam.cz (hereinafter referred to as the “Service“), operated by Seznam.cz, a.s., with its registered office at: Praha 5 – Smíchov, Radlická 3294/10, Postcode: 150 00, ID No. 26168685 (hereinafter referred to as “Seznam.cz”). The Service offers users attractive content from the Czech Internet, so that everyone can regularly browse it for interesting articles suited to their preferences and selected on the basis of newsworthiness.
Websites that wish for their articles to be featured in the Service must comply with the rules below. In order for their texts to also be featured in the preferred content on the Seznam.cz homepage, the following content recommendations should be followed. The necessary preconditions to collaboration in using the Service include consent to the Seznam Partner terms of service (/napoveda/podminky/) by the webmaster interested in the Service as well as an ongoing active Seznam partner contractual relationship throughout the period of using the Service, since the technical operation of the Service, technological delivery of ads, administration of ad spaces and, last but not least, fixing and payment of commissions are managed via the Seznam partner service.
The aim is to establish a level-playing field in a transparent manner for all Web service providers who are interested in the Service.
Seznam.cz wants to offer its users high-quality, trustworthy content, which has been created in the spirit of integrity and in realisation of responsibility towards the brand, readers and society at large. Partner sites that follow these basic rules also make these commitments.

Article II. – Business models of collaboration

Collaboration within the Service can be pursued under a written Service Contract (hereinafter referred to as the “Contract”), which Seznam.cz enters into with all partners and which includes these Terms of Service (hereinafter referred to as the “Terms“) that the partner undertakes to comply with under one of the following business models of collaboration, provided that only one of these models can be used a time:

The default business model of collaboration involves using the Seznam.cz Seznam partner ad system, where once a user clicks on a link leading to the partner’s site on the Seznam.cz homepage, an ad supplied by Seznam.cz and their partners is shown to the user on the target website. This is the default collaboration model, which is provided to all partners who adhere to the rules laid down in these Terms.

With this model of collaboration, a partner is entitled to a commission equivalent to 30% of the total net monthly income generated by ads displayed to the user on the partner’s website to which the user was redirected from the Service (calculated from the amount exclusive of VAT after deducting bonuses, commissions or other discounts). Seznam.cz may deduct from the monthly income, based on which the commission is determined, a technological fee for the operation of Seznam.cz’s ad system and other technological or similar fees applied to Seznam.cz by operators of third-party ad systems participating in the Seznam.cz ad system. The amount of those fees are determined by Seznam.cz and the operators of the participating ad systems.

With this model, monetisation is subject to the following two rules:

ads supplied by Seznam.cz must be displayed to the user for at least 30 minutes, even if the user proceeds from the article on the partner’s website to other content on the same partner’s website, or to the partner’s other websites included in the “Seznam traffic” collaboration service (hereinafter referred to as a “Session“); a single uninterrupted user Session commencing with the user clicking through to the partner’s website from the Service and continuing with the user’s further click-throughs to other content on the same partner’s website or on the partner’s other websites included in the “Seznam traffic” collaboration service is regarded as one Session;
the partner must comply with the Seznam.cz Technical Parameters of Services specified in the Contract; displaying ads other than those supplied by Seznam.cz must be avoided for all website traffic brought from the Service during a Session;

the partner may apply for a collaboration arrangement referred to as a “self-monetisation model” or switch to this model from the one referred to under Article II(1) of the Terms on the condition they have been using the default collaboration model described under Article II(1) for at least 3 months; in the self-monetisation model, the user will be shown ads provided and administered by the partner themselves, or their contractual partners, after they click their way to the partner’s website from the Seznam.cz homepage.

With this collaboration model, Seznam.cz will be entitled to a 50% commission on the total net monthly income generated by the ads displayed to the user on the partner’s website after the user clicks their way to it from the Service (calculated from the amount excluding VAT after deducting bonuses, commissions and other discounts).

The self-monetisation model can be used if the following conditions are met:

the partner’s total payments to Seznam.cz for the past 6 months must amount to at least CZK 9 million, excl. VAT, for all types of collaboration; only direct business collaboration with Seznam.cz conducted under the partner’s unique ID shall be counted towards the financial limit; of these financial limits, collaboration on the Service must amount to at least CZK 2.5 million. excl. VAT, for at least 8 of the partner’s biggest websites; for the avoidance of doubt, payments related to brokering activity or so-called media representation shall not be included in the partner’s overall payments to Seznam.cz;
self-monetisation is arranged for a definite period of 12 months at all times; after which it can be extended if the conditions set out under the previous point are met;
if the partner meets the conditions for self-monetisation, a test is performed to establish whether or not with this mode of collaboration the partner generates a greater income in relation to Seznam.cz than under the default monetisation model provided by Seznam.cz; the test itself shall run for three calendar months, using the existing ad positions the partner reserves on their website for the default monetisation model provided by Seznam.cz; the partner must not add more ad positions during the test;
whether self-monetisation generates higher payments on the given website than it would under the default business model set out under Article II(1) of the Terms shall be assessed on a monthly basis and the condition must be met every month; otherwise, the test stage may be terminated prematurely;
if the test is failed, the partner may only apply for a new test after 6 months at the earliest;
the self-monetisation model may cover up to 90% of the partner’s listed website’s ad spaces, and in all of the articles featured in the Service, they are required to deploy the SSP script for self-monetising partners as per the technical conditions set out at /ssp-skript-pro-vlasni-monetizaci/; the partner undertakes to ensure that at least 10% of the displays in each ad space on the partner’s website are covered by the default model of collaboration as set out under paragraph 1 of this article of the Terms; this percentage must be observed in each ad zone; the percentages in all ad zones will not be added up;
in the self-monetisation model, the partner may not, without the prior written consent of Seznam.cz, change or increase the number of ad spaces on the website beyond the number at which the website passed the test referred to under paragraph 2(c) of this article of the Terns

If the partner uses their own solution in deploying their ad spaces (an extension of Seznam.cz’s JSSSP script), or if any changes or updates to the script result in the ads being displayed incorrectly or in other errors, Seznam a.s. will not be liable for such errors and damage caused by the partner’s solution.

Article III. – Listing partner websites

To be listed in the Service, a website must comply with the following rules:
1. the website must contain identification data on the webmaster and contact details of their editorial office (for example the name of the responsible person, typically the editor-in-chief);
2. the content of the website and articles on the website must comply with the applicable law and good morals;
3. the website may not disseminate or contribute to the dissemination of disinformation or conspiracy theories; if the website figures in the List of Conspiracy Websites of the Endowment Fund for Independent Journalism or in the list of the Konspiratori.sk project, it will not be listed in the Service;
4. the website must be accessible and fully functional for users; the articles must include a preview image or annotation (lead) and must not contain any elements or features that use unfair or misleading practices to drive users away from the partner’s website to which they were redirected from the Service;
5. the website must not comprise a majority of advertising (the actual content must account for at least 50%);
6. the website must publish new content articles at regular intervals (at least 1 per week); a content article is an article that contains a lead, the body of the text and conclusion, as opposed to mere user reviews, separate recipes, horoscopes or price comparisons;
7. a user who comes to the partner’s website from the Seznam.cz homepage must not be prevented or hindered from returning to the Seznam.cz homepage;
8. in the default business model of collaboration referred to under Article II(1) of the Terms, the partner must ensure that while the user browses through the partner’s website after clicking through to it from the Seznam.cz homepage, the partner’s ad spaces only show ads supplied by Seznam.cz and the Seznam.cz’s SSP measuring script is launched on the partner’s website; the ads supplied by Seznam.cz to the partner’s website will be ads determined unilaterally by Seznam.cz and they will include all types of ads supplied by Seznam.cz (including Sklik ads and ads from other sources); as part of this solution, the partner must have the automated ad launching feature turned off; a situation where the partner’s website does not launch all advertising codes fashioned for them by Seznam.cz also qualifies as an infringement of this rule;
9. as regards inbound traffic on the partner’s website generated by the Service, inside a single Session, as described under Article II(1)(a) of the Terms, the user must not be redirected elsewhere once they reach the end of the article unless the redirection is knowingly initiated by the user themselves;
10. in the default collaboration model described under Article II(1) of the Terms, the partner must ensure that the ads are displayed in such advertising formats and layouts that the parameters are defined in the document available at /rozlozeni-reklamy/, are complied with, it being understood that the actual execution of the requirements by the partner is subject to prior approval by Seznam.cz and the partner may not make any changes thereafter;
11. in relation to inbound traffic on the partner’s website generated by the Service or when using the Service, the partner may not offer, present or activate on their website third party content referral services and products (such as Google, Strossle, etc.) or products that serve purposes similar to the Service (such as Google News, etc.) or user discussion products (such as Facebook discussion module, etc.), or search products (such as Google, etc.); the only exceptions are discussion modules, referral algorithms and searches that have been developed internally by the partner, as well as social sharing buttons, provided that they transmit the so-called UTM parameter as per the User Session Identification Agreement;
12. the partner’s website will not be listed in the Service if collaboration on the Service has been terminated or the website has been de-listed from the Service for an infringement of these Terms during the past three months.

Article IV. – Publishing partner articles

In order for their articles to be published in the Service, the webmaster must supply articles that meet the following criteria:
1. the texts and photos or videos in the articles must be used in accordance with the applicable law, and any elements subject to copyright must be used as stipulated by copyright laws; in particular they must be licensed and the author or source must be indicated;
  - photos pulled from social media sites (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter) can be used in the articles if they are commensurate with the actual authorial input of the articles and if the photos are included as “embedded” in the social media sites concerned; in particular, bulk downloads of third-party photos and creating one’s own photo galleries in articles must be avoided if the photos are only used in this manner and the licensing aspect is not treated in any way;
  - articles containing pirated shots or stills from films and TV series (typically in the form of so-called screenshots) must be avoided; in these types of articles, only official distributor materials (typically those used in invites to premières or broadcasts) or materials purchased from official photo agencies may be published;
2. the articles must contain their author’s name or the source and, for authored texts, the author’s full name must be added;
3. the text must also include the source of the information or a citation with the author’s name; for texts taken from other websites or sources, authorial input or observations must be added for news articles; if the topic of the article is not original, this must be stated in the introduction of the text;
4. headlines or main photos in the articles on the website must not intentionally mislead the reader and the headlines of articles must not include information that does not reflect the content of the article itself (so-called click-baiting);
  - for detailed examples of click-baiting see the analysis at BuzzSumo;
  - the rating criteria applied by the Endowment Fund for Independent Journalism also reflect some of the faulty approaches;
5. articles containing photo galleries comprised of only illustrative or stock photos must be avoided; if the partner does not have topical or relevant photographs for the article they are writing, they may use one stock or illustrative photo per article, but creating photo galleries out of such illustrative and stock photos must be avoided;
6. the articles must be free of typos and spelling mistakes;
7. the articles submitted to the Service may not be older than 14 days from the their first publication on the partner’s website;
8. texts that have already been submitted via RSS in the past and have not been updated in any way by the author (i.e. repeatedly recycled texts) must be avoided; also, the articles must not contain re-dated identical content from the same publisher;
9. the articles must not contain vulgar, sexual or pornographic content;
10. the articles must not promote violence, harassment, racial, religious, political or ethnic intolerance, terrorism or organised crime;
11. the articles must not wrongly infringe upon the reputation of private individuals, contain insults, lies, slander, humiliation or otherwise impair human dignity;
12. the articles must not incite unlawful conduct or provide information which may be used to break the law;
13. commercial articles or videos and competitions, as well as articles containing surreptitious advertising or commercial links in the text must be avoided; also prohibited are links leading away from the partner’s website (unless they link to the partner’s other websites where the partner holds the Session), and various clumps of images, videos, games, etc.; the content defined in the previous sentence is only allowed if embedded as specified under (a) of this paragraph of the Terms or if the partner concludes an amendment to the Contract and if they have had such commercial content approved by Seznam.cz in advance via e-mail sent to newsfeed@firma.seznam.cz; the action referred to under (c) of this paragraph of the Terms shall not be regarded as an infringement of the restriction on links leading away from the partner’s website if the link leading away from the website is used in connection with indicating the source of the original content, e.g. the exclusive source of the original news information, links to expert studies, etc.);
14. the articles may not offer earnings per click on any ad;
15. the articles must not disturb the user by launching a loud soundtrack;
16. the website, when loading, must not require downloading excessive amounts of data without the user’s consent;
17. articles launching pop-up or pop-under windows for collecting emails or enabling browser notifications or any form of subscriptions to newsletters or entering readers’ emails, elements covering the page content, spontaneous installations of ActiveX features, or spontaneous downloads of files other than the website itself must be avoided;
18. the articles may not launch or trigger banners or pop-up or pop-up windows that are used for obtaining the consent to the processing of personal data that infringe the rules set out in Article VI of the Terms.
19. the articles must not contain automatically generated or machine translated content;
20. articles, photos, or videos that require a sign-in to be viewed in their entirety must be avoided;
21. articles, photos or videos that can be viewed in their entirety only after a payment or other compensation (e-mail, personal data) is provided must be avoided;
22. the articles must not contain a preview image that contains a logo, watermark, illegible information, text or redundant graphics;
23. content that artificially increases the number of views or impressions of the ads owing to content paging, in which a single article is artificially divided into several separate sections and the page is automatically refreshed and loaded when each subsequent section is displayed, must be avoided.
24. the practice of linking to subscriptions, self-promotion of the partner’s services and similar services or features in or under the article or in a banner in or under the article must be avoided; only one small banner is allowed at a time (with a maximum size of 300 x 300) located on the right or left side of the website or in the website footer; the partner must have the placement of such banner approved by Seznam.cz in advance via newsfeed@firma.seznam.cz; the consent will be granted provided that the partner ensures that at least one uninterrupted user Session is held as part of the user’s activity on such subsequent pages or subpages resulting from the Service, and if the user returns to the Service or the partner’s website to which they got from the Service, the user is treated as if they had got to the partner’s website from the Service.
It is expressly forbidden for webmasters to make successive modifications to articles already published if such modifications infringe the rules for articles specified above.

Article V. – Displaying and selecting partner articles

The specific placement and ranking of the articles in the Service (in terms of the frequency of displays of each article, number of published articles per partner, exact positions where each article is displayed inside the Service, etc.) are determined by Seznam.cz’s referral and selection algorithm, which assesses a number of criteria on an ongoing basis. In this way, different articles are displayed to each user based on their reading preferences, browsing history and the time they spent going through specific content items. The algorithm also determines the period during which the article is displayed in the Service.
To maximise the number of displays of the featured articles and to make the displays as efficient as possible, we recommend the following:
1. the selection algorithm gives more space within the Service to articles that it evaluates as full-featured, with an obvious added editorial value;
2. the selection algorithm also looks into topical duplicities; as a result, texts pulled from other websites or sources should be supplemented with added authorial input (or the author’s own observations for news articles); this is especially true for the ČTK press agency articles as this content is published by most websites;
3. the automatic referral system also takes into account the average time users spend reading the article, so it is advisable to send longer authored texts to the Service; short articles may sink faster to lower positions within the Service;
4. as for articles that contain a photo gallery, the algorithm gives preference to pieces with full-featured text captions that replace or substantially add to the content of the article itself: this makes the photo gallery self-contained either thanks to its content (e.g. news reports) or form (e.g. photos from your own lifestyle production); photo galleries without authored captions and photo galleries pulled from third-party websites are assigned a lower level of relevance by the selection algorithm;
5. the selection algorithm also recognises tags; some of them are displayed on the Seznam.cz homepage under the lead of each article, and the tags are then used to created separate pages dedicated to specific topics; each partner can add keywords to their website’s metadata, as well as, for instance, article headlines, photo galleries, etc.
  - for detailed technical specifications go to metadata.seznam.cz;

Article VI. – Obtaining consent to process personal data

The success of the Service in the long run depends, among other things, on maximising the user experience associated with exposure to the content throughout the user’s visit, ranging from the Seznam.cz homepage up to the partner’s content website listed in the Service. Any negative user experience on the website listed in the Service might not only reflect poorly on the Service itself, but also on the Seznam.cz homepage service. As the user experience also includes obtaining consent to the processing of personal data (hereinafter referred to as “Obtaining Consent“), the following rules apply for Obtaining Consent:
1. a fully functional user interface for Obtaining Consent must be implemented on the partner’s website, with the maximum frequency at which the interface may be displayed to the user on the partner’s website set to once per user Session;
2. The consent must be obtained in accordance with the GDPR and related laws;
3. when Obtaining Consent, the user must be informed in clear and intelligible language as to why and to whom they grant their consent to the processing of their personal data, what the scope of the consent they are granting is and, once they have granted the consent, how they can exercise their right to change or revoke it;
4. the option to grant the consent must not be pre-ticked;
5. no part of the user interface for Obtaining Consent may be covered by the ad space or any other layer unrelated to the process of Obtaining Consent; in particular, the user interface for Obtaining Consent must not overlap with any advertising or information banners.

We recommend using such solutions in the user interface for Obtaining Consent that are based on the IAB standard rules, so-called TCF 2.0 (for more information go to https://iabeurope.eu/tcf-2-0/).

Article VII. – Infringements and sanctions

The sanctions below apply if the partner infringes any of the rules set out under the Contract or Article II(1)(a) and (b) of the Terms, Article II(2)(f) and (g) of the Terms, Article III(1)(a) to (i) and (k) of the Terms, or Article IV(1)(m) of the Terms:
1. for the first infringement, the partner will receive a notice to remove the infringement within 24 hours at the latest; if the partner fails to remove the infringement within the set time limit, the website infringing the rule will be de-listed from the Service;
2. for the second infringement, the partner will receive a notice to remove the infringement within 24 hours at the latest; if the partner fails to remove the infringement within the set time limit, the website infringing the rule will be de-listed from the Service;
3. for the third infringement, the infringing website will be de-listed from the Service for 14 calendar days; the partner will be notified of the reasons for the de-listing; after the lapse of the 14-day period, the partner may request for their website to the re-listed in the Service if it complies with the rules set out in these Terms;
4. for the fourth infringement, the infringing website will be de-listed from the Service for 30 calendar days; the partner will be notified of the reasons for the de-listing; after the lapse of the 30-day period, the partner may request for their website to the re-listed in the Service if it complies with the rules set out in these Terms;
5. for the fifth infringement, the entire portfolio of the partner’s websites will be de-listed from the Service for 30 calendar days; the partner will be notified of the reasons for the de-listing of their portfolio; after the lapse of the 30-day period, the partner may request for their websites to the re-listed in the Service if they comply with the rules set out in these Terms;
6. for the sixth infringement, the entire portfolio of the partner’s websites will be de-listed from the Service for 30 calendar days; the partner will be notified of the reasons for the de-listing of their portfolio; after the lapse of the 30-day period, the partner may request for their websites to the re-listed in the Service if they comply with the rules set out in these Terms;
7. for the seventh infringement, Seznam.cz may terminate their collaboration with the partner within the Service by serving a written notice of Contract termination, with effect as of the date of delivery of the notice to the partner.

For the duties laid down under Article II(1)(a) and (b) of the Terms, Article II(2)(f) and (g) of the Terms, Article III(1)( k) of the Terms and Article IV(1)(m) of the Terms, the procedure set out under Article VII(1)(a) and (b) of the Terms will not be applied, the partner will not be given any time limit to remove the infringement and the partner’s website will be de-listed from the Service immediately once the rule is infringed and remain de-listed until the infringement is removed. For the third and subsequent infringements, the procedure under Article VII(1)(c) to (f) of the Terms will be applied.
The rules laid down under Article III(1)(j) or Article VI of the Terms are subject to the sanction regime set out under paragraph 1 of this article of the Terms, with different arrangements for the procedures under paragraph (1)(a) and (b) of this article of the Terms, where the time limit is 5 business days instead of 24 hours for the infringements specified in the relevant paragraph of the Terms.
The following sanctions apply if the partner infringes any of the rules laid down under Article IV of these Terms (except for Article IV(1)(m) of the Terms):
1. in the event of an infringement, the infringing article will not be published in the Service or will be removed from the Service; the partner will be notified of the reasons for not publishing or deleting the article;
2. for the third infringement of the same rule, the infringing website will be de-listed from the Service for 14 calendar days; the partner will be notified of the reasons for de-listing the website; after the lapse of the set 14-day period, the partner may request for their website to be re-listed in the Service if it complies with the rules set out in these Terms;
3. for the fourth and subsequent infringements of the same rule, the infringing website will be de-listed from the Service for 30 calendar days; the partner will be notified of the reasons for de-listing the website; after the lapse of the set 30-day period, the partner may request for their website to the re-listed in the Service if it complies with the rules set out in these Terms;

it being understood that compliance with the rules will generally be audited once a month for each partner’s website and any infringements identified by the audit will be communicated to the partner. If multiple infringements of the same nature are identified and communicated to the partner as part of the monthly audit (i.e. multiple irregularities that can be subsumed under the same provision of this Article of the Terms), they shall be deemed to constitute one infringement of the rule concerned.

If the partner infringes the self-monetisation rules set out under Article II(2) of the Terms or if the partner repeatedly infringes the Contract or these Terms, the partner will lose the right to this type of collaboration and will be reassigned to the default collaboration model as per Article II(1) of the Terms or their collaboration within the Service will be terminated. If the partner continues with the default collaboration model, Seznam.cz has the right to deny the partner use of the self-monetisation model pursuant to Article II(2) of the Terms for 12 calendar months from the removal thereof.
As regards the sanction rules set out under paragraphs 1 to 3 of this article of the Terms, if the partner has not infringed any rule set out in these Terms for 12 consecutive calendar months, any previous infringements of the Terms will be annulled and the partner will be treated as if they had no previous infringements.
A website may only be re-listed in the Service following prior discussion with representatives of Seznam.cz, provided that the website complies with the rules set out in these Terms.