Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy: FAQs

What is personally identifiable information?

Personally identifiable information is any data that can be used to identify, contact or locate a particular person. Examples of such information include name, address, telephone number, and email address.

Do you collect personally identifiable information on people who simply visit your sites while web-surfing?

No. We only collect personally identifiable information when people voluntarily provide such information, such as when they sign up for a service or promotional event. For web surfers who simply visit our sites, or click onto banner ads, we collect anonymous Click Stream Data that permits us to provide better, targeted advertising messages.

What is Click Stream Data?

Click Stream Data is anonymous information on a web surfer, such as a web surfer's IP address, web pages which have been viewed by a surfer, date and time, domain type, and responses to advertisements.

What are cookies, and do I have to use them?

If a web surfer views an ad served by Advertising.com, they are assigned a unique number, known as a cookie, that is recorded and stored on their computer in their web browser's cookie file. If the web surfer subsequently visits a website on which Advertising.com serves ads, Advertising.com reads the cookie to help target ads to that web surfer based on his or her interests. Cookies do not harm web surfers' computers. Some of the things that cookies do include: help to ensure that ads are not repeated to web surfers, help advertisers learn how their website is used, help advertisers gain knowledge to improve the look and feel of their websites, and help advertisers learn which ads are most effective and appealing to web surfers. All of these things provide important insight that is used to provide a more enriching experience for the web-surfing public. If a web surfer has opted to provide Advertising.com with personally identifiable data, in some cases the cookie will help identify the web surfer to assist in providing services (such as remembering passwords) and with delivering a relevant message to that consumer. While cookies are not essential to Advertising.com's continued success, they do help us to reach several of our key goals such as providing a more fulfilling, results-oriented experience on the Web, reducing repetition of advertising and increasing the amount of relevant data viewed by web surfers. A web surfer may choose to opt-out of receiving the benefits associated with our use of cookies at any time by following a simple procedure to manually delete his or her cookies. Web surfers should refer to their respective browser's user manual for instructions on taking such action. You may also elect to opt-out of the use of cookies by following the instructions at the opt-out section of this site.

What are Web Beacons?

A web beacon or clear GIF or pixel tag is a line of code that companies place on their websites to allow us to access cookies and to help them track their marketing campaigns and the general usage patterns of visitors to their websites. When an Internet surfer clicks on an advertiser's ad, the surfer is sent to the advertiser's web page. If the advertiser chooses to use web beacons, the web page will contain a clear GIF that is not visible on the screen. A GIF is a type of graphic that often appears invisible because it is only 1x1 pixel in size. In these instances, GIFs are represented by HTML tags. The HTML tag is programmed by the advertisers to collect certain anonymous information about the surfer's visit to the website. This non-personally identifiable information is then sent to the Advertising.com ad serving system. Companies use clear GIFs on their websites to learn more about their visitors' use of their websites and may be used to target ads to those visitors on other websites. Depending on the type of service offering, the captured click activity may be used for reporting about the website visits or for future advertising to the web surfer. In each case where we use web beacons on advertisers' sites, we strongly encourage such advertisers to provide web surfers with appropriate notice. In this regard, we ask advertisers in our standard advertising terms that when an advertiser has agreed to the use of web beacons that they do the following:

1. Provide a clear and conspicuous link to its privacy policy from each page containing the web beacon.
2. Include a statement in its privacy policy that the advertiser is using web beacons on the advertiser's website, that this is done to track the performance of advertiser's marketing efforts and that no personally identifiable information in collected in the process.