Illustrative examples of direct and indirect remuneration
Payment of a higher amount of commission by a business user for increased relative prominence, for example in auctions run as part of premium/partner programmes Business users’ or corporate website users’ periodic commitments to paid ranking or joint promotional efforts within or on the online intermediation services or online search engines concerned Direct payment for endorsement or preferred placement by the relevant provider of online intermediation services or online search engines Direct payment for ‘boosting’ visibility of business pages on social media, online directory services or other online intermediation services (One off) Direct payment for increased visibility during particular periods (Regular) Direct payment leading to a product featuring prominently in a ranking Loyalty or premium programmes Business users can pay for certain premium features through loyalty or premium programmes offered by the platforms. The mere fact of membership of such programmes, rather than possibly objective effects of that membership on performance measured under different main parameters (e.g. delivery speed in e-commerce), may indirectly improve a business users' ranking because of the configuration of the ranking mechanisms that may favour those businesses that are members. In-app purchases In-app purchases are extra content or subscriptions within apps on mobile devices or desktops available after the original download. Not all apps offer in-app purchases, but some or all features of an app may require users to make a one-time in-app purchase or sign up to a (paid) subscription. Examples include extra app functionalities, premium and add-free app versions, etc. Business users that offer apps with in-app purchases, usually pay commission to the platform on these purchases. This can improve the visibility of their apps in search results. In some cases, in-app purchases can even be referenced in the ranking by the app stores operators, separately from, and in addition to, the underlying app, which equally enhances the overall ‘relative prominence’ of the app concerned. Ancillary services Similar to loyalty or premium programmes, the mere fact of using ancillary services of the relevant provider of online intermediation services, such as upfront payment, escrow, fulfilment, cloud services, rebates, logistics, insurance, etc., could have an impact on ranking. Reward/incentive structures Reward programmes granting credits for free on-platform advertising – which impacts relative prominence – in return for, for example, business users expanding their product or service offerings on the online intermediation services concerned, in terms of breadth and/or scale, or in return for committing to mark-downs during specific period where the resulting increased relative prominence does not result merely from the relative price differences - where price is a main parameter Trust marks Licence fees for trust marks, where the relevant provider of online intermediation services or of online search engines is in some way involved with the specific trust mark Exclusivity Exclusivity deals if they can lead to a better ranking. This could be the case where such deals are voluntary – as opposed to unilaterally imposed on business users of the online intermediation services – and only taken up by a subset of business users. Profit-sharing Indirect remuneration may exist in a situation of profit-sharing when compensation is, for example, paid as a percentage of the links clicked on the referring online search engine. A business may, for example, be ranked higher in the list of search results if it agrees to allow the provider of the online search engine to display the business’ content in a news aggregation service or a podcasting service offered by that same provider. Access and use of data Business users may agree to granting enhanced access to, or other contractual/legal rights regarding the data they generate by consuming the online intermediation services, to the providers of these services. Such a contractual commitment concerning data, if it is made only by a subset of business users, could impact ranking in different ways, including as a result of superior ranking optimisation tips/insights provided by the provider in return. These data are valuable information that can also give online intermediation services a strong commercial or competitive advantage, including when they are themselves actively selling on the same online intermediation services. Bundled offers / commercial relations Remuneration being part of broader commercial arrangements with providers of online intermediation services. In such a situation, direct payment for a single service, which may even be unrelated to the online intermediation services or online search engine concerned, could impact the status – and possibly ranking – of the relevant business across more or all of the services exchanged between the two entities.
Source: EUR-Lex (Cellar) · retrieved 2026-09-07