Remarketing Privacy Policy Sample

Is  your privacy policy correct for remarketing?

If you are using Google Adwords or a similar retargeting program, it may not be.

Remarketing campaigns are one of the most successful types of paid ad campaigns you can do in online marketing. The high-level concept is pretty basic. You place a remarketing tag on all of the pages of your site. Once a visitor comes to your site, a remarketing cookie is placed in their browser. Then, as your visitors travel around the web, you can target ads that invite them to come back to your site.

When we set up remarketing campaigns for clients, we let them know that Google requires them to update their privacy policy to let visitors know that this technology is being used. In their article explaining what to include in your privacy policy about remarketing, Google requires:

• An appropriate description of how you use remarketing
• How Google (or other 3rd parties you advertise with) show your ads
• How Google (& 3rd parties) use cookies to serve ads based on visits to your site
• Information on how they can opt-out of Google’s Use of cookies by updating their ad settings.

What using remarketing means for your privacy policy

Update your privacy policy to include the above recommended information.  In a comprehensive article on  Google Privacy Policies by Brad Geddes, he found that  90% of sites he surveyed were breaking at least one of Google’s privacy policies. And although there has not been a lot of talk about actual penalties, in my experience with Google, playing by the rules is WAY better than finding out too late that you broke one. What they focus on changes over time – so better be safe than sorry. Keeping track of what Google requires, by periodically reviewing their policies, can keep you out of hot water.

Remarketing Privacy Policy Samples

So how would a privacy policy that stated all of this look? There is no exact template to follow, but using the Google guidelines above, craft language in the sytle of your own privacy policy. And of course you should run it by your legal counsel as well.  To help you with some ideas, the following are a few examples of sites that have incorporated remarketing language into their privacy policy.

1) The site Trigger.com has a large-print, super simple, privacy policy that seems to cater to those who may not understand everything about how computers operate and store data. They took the time to not give users the standard legal-beagle version of a privacy policy, but to actually educate visitors on what it all means.  In reference to the use of remarketing, their policy reads as follows:

Online Advertising We Use

We use Google AdWords Remarketing to advertise trigger across the Internet. AdWords remarketing will display relevant ads tailored to you based on what parts of the TriggerApp website you have viewed by placing a cookie on your machine. THIS COOKIE DOES NOT IN ANYWAY IDENTIFY YOU OR GIVE ACCESS TO YOUR COMPUTER The cookie is used to say “This person visited this page, so show them ads relating to that page.” Google AdWords Remarketing allows us to tailor our marketing to better suit your needs and only display ads that are relevant to you.”

This is then followed up with the Google suggested copy and links for allowing users to opt out of Google Ads or all ads.

2) Jive.com also has a nice presentation of their privacy policy. They start off by saying “contact us if you need information or have questions” and provide an email address.It is well laid out with specific headings, and even though they participate in many programs, they manage to make it sound pretty simple.

Remarketing

Jive.com also uses 3rd party vendor re-marketing tracking cookies, including the Google Adwords tracking cookie. This means we will continue to show ads to you across the internet, specifically on the Google Content Network (GCN). As always we respect your privacy and are not collecting any identifiable information through the use of Google’s or any other 3rd party remarketing system.

The third-party vendors, including Google, whose services we use – will place cookies on web browsers in order to serve ads based on past visits to our website. – Third party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on a user’s prior visits to your website. This allows us to make special offers and continue to market our services to those who have shown interest in our service.

3) Techsmith.com has a very comprehensive, easy to read, privacy policy. It provides lots of information and due to it’s user friendly approach, instills confidence and trust in the reader. Below is an excerpt about remarketing, but there is even more if you read the full privacy policy.

In addition to using cookies and related technologies as described above, we also may permit certain third party companies to help us tailor advertising that we think may be of interest to users and to collect and use other data about user activities on our Sites and/or Services (e.g., to allow them to tailor ads on third party services). These companies may deliver ads that might also place cookies and otherwise track user behavior.

4) Below is an excerpt about remarketing from hipiti.com’s privacy policy one of the most detailed privacy policies I have read. Because they collect lots of data about users, and provide ratings and social monitoring, their policy is very comprehensive. This is in a section headed: Advertising & Remarketing.

For example, we may use Google’s “remarketing” service to target our ads to you based on your prior use of the Site when you visit on other sites in Google’s content network.

5) On Web2store.co.nz there is an entire page devoted to Adwords remarketing privacy policy.  I reached that page via a Google search. However, when I clicked on their privacy policy link in their footer, it was not on their privacy policy page. Here is the language they use:

This website uses Google AdWords

This website uses the Google AdWords remarketing service to advertise on third party websites (including Google) to previous visitors to our site. It could mean that we advertise to previous visitors who haven’t completed a task on our site, for example using the contact form to make an enquiry. This could be in the form of an advertisement on the Google search results page, or a site in the Google Display Network. Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on someone’s past visits to the [CLIENT NAME] website. Of course, any data collected will be used in accordance with our own privacy policy and Google’s privacy policy.”

As you can see, there is more than one way to implement the remarketing language into your privacy policy. I hope this will get you started. Let me know if you have other suggestions or examples of remarketing privacy policy language.

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