Cabinet Office
Advertising on the web is envisaged as being a revenue stream for government websites. It can reduce the cost of providing government information and services, which saves the taxpayer money or results in better quality services and faster delivery of information and services on-line. It is a perfectly legitimate thing to do as long as the guidelines are adhered to.
Sponsors fund parts of a government publicity project, or support it by providing services or equipment. They do this in exchange for visible acknowledgement. This can be understood as implying a closer relationship than advertising. Therefore particular care is needed to make clear that both your Department and your website retain their independence in every way.
Over time, it is likely that advertising and sponsorship will become increasingly important as ways of funding the provision of information and services or developing websites. It is expected that guidance here will need to be regularly revisited, as markets develop.
1.3.1 Contract management
The management of advertising or sponsorship arrangements can be established using the following routes:
The available costs, benefits and expertise are key factors when deciding which route will suit your organisation. All must be examined and included in the evaluation of the business case for making use of advertising or sponsorship to raise potential commercial revenues
1.3.2 Advertising
Using the Internet for advertising falls into two distinct categories:
Advice on buying advertising is covered in section 1.3.3.
Selling advertising space on Government websites is not an easy task. This is a rapidly evolving and fiercely competitive area and a dedicated, trained resource is required to managed, sell and promote this service. You are advised to source help from specialist agencies, eg, COI Communications.
The full value should be obtained from the sale of advertising on government websites.
Departments and agencies need to judge carefully the balance between the effort required to achieve the maximum value and the income that is earned. Payment for web advertising may not be based on space alone, but on the number of page downloads or ‘clicks on the ad’. Alternatively, an advertiser may wish to sell ‘button space’ on your website. These are fixed graphics with links to the advertised organisation’s own website or campaign, paid for at a fixed rate for a fixed period of time, sometimes regardless of the number of page impressions or ‘clicks through’. Advertisers may expect there to be a link between known user interest and who sees the advert. You will probably need to be able to prove levels of access (refer to section 1.4 Evaluation and section 1.5 Focusing on user needs).
Advertisers should be advised to bear in mind the range of connection speeds used by visitors to government websites and the implications for viable file sizes of advertisement content.
1.3.3 The buying of advertising space on other websites
As the market place is in constant evolution and having a strategic approach to Internet advertising is required. Unlike traditional advertising space, the Internet does not benefit widely from independent audience audits. Traffic claims can be variable and you must ask for specific information - page impressions, from where specific information and pages are requested, etc - and make judgements on the effectiveness of an individual site against the site operator’s claims.
In line with your overall media communications strategy specialist agencies are best placed to carry out the following tasks for you:
This is a specialist area and you are advised to refer to the Guidance on the Work of the Government Information Service
1.3.4 Sponsorship
Sponsorship may be a useful means of saving public expenditure. Like all government publicity projects, websites should observe the guidance given in the Cabinet Office Guidance for Departments on Sponsorship of Government Activities. This document can be found online at: http://www.gics.gov.uk (see above) or published in the Directory of Civil Service Guidance. These guidelines should be consulted in full. Like all government guidelines they are subject to amendment and update.
In general, sponsorship:
Sponsorship of individual amounts, including value-in-kind, of more than £5,000 must be disclosed in Departmental Annual Reports.
To measure the value of in-kind sponsorship, where the sponsor provides goods or services that benefit of the project, Departments should consider the opportunity cost, ie, how much it would have cost the department if it had paid for the support provided. Ongoing costs should also be taken into account for the lifetime of the sponsorship agreement.
Returns to the sponsor must be specified in writing as part of the sponsorship agreement. The agreement should cover, for example, the display of the name of the sponsor or whether there is to be a link to the sponsor’s website.
Credit to a sponsor must never create confusion about branding or your website’s identity.
Credit to a sponsor should only occur on those parts of your web space where the sponsor is directly contributing to its provision. This should be specified in the sponsorship agreement.
Acknowledgement should be concise. A company logo, if used, must not distract from clear branding of your website’s own identity or any government branding. A sponsor’s logo must comply with the universal accessibility and graphics requirements of these guidelines (refer to section 2.4 and section 2.8).
A company logo must be seen as appropriate and must not be of a size that is visually or perceived to be visually larger or more important than any official or campaign logo. A link to the sponsor’s own web page is perfectly okay. To retain your audience, you may wish to have it open in a new browser window.
If these guidelines have been followed, then no specific disclaimer for this instance of sponsorship should be necessary. It should be evident that the source of sponsorship is appropriate. It is, however, your responsibility to ensure that this relationship cannot be misinterpreted.
In the case that a disclaimer is necessary to avoid the semblance of an inappropriate relationship with the company, then it should be placed next to the credit line in the same heading level and typeface and on the same page. This is because disclaimers that are a link away from a credit have not in practice proved to be effective at avoiding the appearance of a problem.
It would be useful if the government’s policy on sponsorship is included were the disclaimer information just off the home page together with an assertion that all sponsorship of the site meets these criteria.
1.3.5 The commercial value of credits
The giving of credit to suppliers of web services that you employ directly within the functionality of your website can have commercial value. Significant reductions to the cost of features such as search engines can be negotiated especially if logos and links to suppliers’ sites are granted. The value will vary with the popularity of the specific web pages (as shown in page impressions), and the relevance of the service to your readership.
The giving of credit to suppliers of web services, for example, by name, by email address, particularly if within your metadata will also have commercial value. Reductions to costs should be negotiated.
Guidance for Departments on Sponsorship of Government Activities
A central Cabinet Office contact point for advice is: 020 7276 2472
COI Communications website