Advertising

Ethical Policy

Advert types / what we accept

We have set out a series of positions where we normally place adverts. In general, we surround the top, right and bottom of our content with advertising space. We do not allow advertising within authored content. The exceptions are links to in-house sales of pharmacy products, appliances, books and services.

We believe that adverts should not interfere with the use of the site for its intended purposes or annoy the users eg no pop-unders, no pop-overs, no adverts within content (other than in our newspaper).

Ethical guidelines

Patient UK is a site that is used by all to promote health, to help those who are ill to understand about their illness and to help reduce anxiety about illness.

Many people who use this site are ill, bereaved, elderly etc. Doctors regularly recommend this site to their ill patients and to carers of patients.

So all ads need to be totally 'family friendly' and inoffensive to all. Apart from the usual understanding of 'ethical' (ie non-sexist, non-racist, non-defamatory etc) PUK/EMIS does not accept ads that:

• Are in conflict with mainstream health promotion ie no ads for alcohol, cigarettes, etc
• Promote cures that most doctors would not be happy about
• Are for gambling - which includes lotteries, bingos, online poker, etc, etc, (which tend to slip through)
• Use sexual images, or sexual innuendo
• Dating