Advertising and sponsorship

By Mayo Clinic Staff

MayoClinic.org offers a wide range of advertising opportunities from banner ads to sponsorships on our site or in our e-newsletters. These opportunities are customized to meet a particular corporation's or product's branding strategy and budget.

Advertising and sponsorship revenue is used to support MayoClinic.org and Mayo Clinic's research and education programs.

For inquiries about advertising and sponsorships, contact:

Advertising and sponsorship criteria

June 2011

(Criteria subject to change without notice)

Advertising that may be allowed on the service, provided certain criteria are met:

  • Corporate image advertising or corporate sponsorship
  • Over-the-counter medications approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
  • Prescription drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration
  • Consumer products with a health connection
  • Fitness products or services
  • Medical products or devices
  • Pharmacies (retail and online — VIPPS program compliant only for online)

Advertising that is prohibited on the service includes:

  • Alcohol
  • Tobacco products
  • Firearms and weapons
  • Fireworks
  • Health care services (clinics, hospitals, procedures, lab testing)
  • Legal (including malpractice)
  • Pornography
  • Gambling and lottery
  • Political ads
  • Social cause ads
  • Religious ads
  • Competitors
  • Comparative advertising (no mention of competitive brand names within an ad banner)

Advertising formats that are prohibited on the service include:

  • Pop-ups and floating ads or surveys
  • Ads that have forms within them to collect personally identifiable information while a visitor is on MayoClinic.org

The following advertising types are evaluated on a case-by-case basis:

  • Sweepstakes

Advertising and sponsorship criteria that must be met to allow the company to advertise or sponsor include:

  • Advertisement must not make a health claim for its product that is not clearly substantiated. Advertisers may be required to submit supporting documentation to substantiate claims.
  • No implication of endorsement by Mayo Clinic of product or advertiser may be made.
  • MayoClinic.org retains final approval of all sponsor and product messages, banners and advertising copy that are directly linked or adjacent to the content. This includes verification of advertisement content and placement before it is produced on the site.
  • The advertisement, advertising icons and company logos must be displayed in such a way that they clearly are not part of the MayoClinic.org site content.
  • MayoClinic.org reserves the right to reject, cancel or remove at any time any advertisement from MayoClinic.org for any reason. In such a case, MayoClinic.org will provide prompt notice to the advertiser, together with an explanation. MayoClinic.org also reserves the right to determine the appropriate placement of the advertisement on the website.
  • No unsolicited commercial messages are allowed.
  • Collecting and selling of mailing lists without the users' express permission is not allowed.
  • The full rules for any market research or promotion must be displayed or linked to.
  • Advertisers and agencies cannot collect any personally identifiable information from MayoClinic.org visitors or place any cookies, applets or other such files — if those files transmit any personally identifiable information to the advertisers or agencies — on computers of MayoClinic.org visitors who do not visit advertisers' sites by clicking on their ad banners.
  • MayoClinic.org maintains total editorial independence from advertisers and sponsors. Advertisers and sponsors have no influence over or input in our product development. They also have no influence over the listing of responses to search engine results. Neither advertisers nor sponsors can buy priority listings on our search engine. We don't allow cobranding of our health information.
  • Mayo Clinic does not endorse any of the products and services advertised.
  • No ads will be accepted on MayoClinic.org Web pages that primarily describe or promote Mayo Clinic services for patients.

These guidelines are intended to provide general guidance. They are not inclusive or exhaustive and are subject to change at the discretion of MayoClinic.org at any time.

Any paid advertising listings posted on search results or other pages of our site are identified as "Ads by Google." We review these ads on a regular basis and will remove any that don't meet our criteria for advertisers. However, we aren't able to preview all listings in the "Ads by Google" area before they appear on our site because of the way in which these ads are served to us by Google. It's possible that some listings may appear that don't meet our ad guidelines. For information about how Google sorts these listings, go to http://adwords.google.com/.

Mayo Clinic, Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research (MFMER), and MayoClinic.org do not endorse any companies or products. MFMER has independently developed all content on MayoClinic.org except for the drug and supplement databases.

Jan. 12, 2019