Closing the Gap: Using AI to Align Publisher Agreements with Best Practices
FollowThe PMA Retailer and Merchant Council recently released Retailer Affiliate Agreements Guide: A Checklist for Brands and Retailers Creating and Updating Publisher Terms. While feedback on the content has been great, the council wanted to find ways to make it even more useful.
If you are someone who manages a program– agency, OPM, retailer, brand, etc., this hack is for you! The Guide contemplates a number of recent industry developments that your current terms may not address, such as subnetworks, influencers, and AI.
Thanks to Stacy Carlson, Automattic, for taking the lead on a practical example of how to generate new terms that merge your existing terms with the new recommendations.
Instructions:
First, download your current publisher agreement and save as a file.
Second, download the free PMA Retailer Agreements Guide.
Third, choose your favorite LLM. Upload both of those documents together with this prompt customized with your brand name and the names of the files above: (Stacy used a paid version of Claude but you can use whichever you are most comfortable with!)
“Act as the director of the INSERT BRAND NAME affiliate program. The PMA has just released guidelines on setting up your terms, called “Guide_ Retailer Affiliate Agreements”. You need to review your current affiliate agreement (terms.pdf) and compare it to the Guide_ Retailer Affiliate Agreements.pdf, then update terms.pdf to reflect the PMA’s recommendations. Review to determine whether the terms.pdf already contains a term; if it does, do not duplicate. Do not make up legal jargon or terms. Do not make up any information. The output should be a fully revised text incorporating the new guide suggestions alongside our existing terms.”
In a total of 15 minutes, you will have a document that would have taken you hours to create yourself, and it will be backed with the knowledge of over 20 PMA members who active manage brands.
Want a list or recommendations rather than a rewrite of your current terms? Try this prompt:
“”Act as the director of the INSERT BRAND NAME affiliate program. The PMA has just released guidelines on setting up your terms, called “Guide_ Retailer Affiliate Agreements”. You need to review your current affiliate agreement (terms.pdf) and compare it to the Guide_ Retailer Affiliate Agreements.pdf. Provide a detailed description of any recommendations from the PMA that are missing from the current terms.”
When I ran this prompt along with a program I am in, it suggested needed additions for AI usage, data ownership, attribution nuance, influencer specifics, and order reversals.
Our Treasurer Kelly Ground, breakingGround Solutions, did something similar and reported “I am using AI to solve the challenges created by AI. By utilizing these tools to conduct comprehensive audits of my programs, I have identified and closed legacy gaps that left brands vulnerable to emerging technology risks. I am now establishing clear frameworks that encourage transparency regarding AI-generated content and traffic sources, while prohibiting the use of automated systems or AI tools that manipulate attribution or interfere with the authentic user journey. My goal is to stay focused on protecting program integrity.”
As a reminder, AI is NOT a substitute for legal advice. This exercise is merely to help you ascertain what might be missing from your current legal terms so that you can bring them up to be reviewed by your legal teams before executing. Ultimately it is up to you and your legal team to determine which terms are necessary for your particular programs.
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