Privacy Policy
What are cookies?
A “cookie” is a small text file containing a string
of alphanumeric characters. There are two types of cookies: a
persistent cookie and a session cookie. A persistent cookie gets
entered by your Web browser into the cookie folder on your computer’s
hard drive. A persistent cookie remains in that cookie folder,
which is maintained and governed by your Web browser, after you
close your browser program. A session cookie is temporary and
disappears after you close your browser. DoubleClick’s ad-serving
and paid search listing (“DART Search”) products utilize
the same cookie: the DART cookie. The DART cookie is a persistent
cookie and consists of the name of the domain that set the cookie
(“ad.doubleclick.net”), the lifetime of the cookie,
and a “value.” DoubleClick’s DART technology generates
a unique series of characters for the “value” portion
of the cookie.
What is the DoubleClick cookie doing on my computer?
If you have a DoubleClick cookie in your Cookies folder, it is
most likely a DART cookie. The DoubleClick DART cookie helps marketers
learn how well their Internet advertising campaigns or paid search
listings perform. Many marketers and Internet websites use DoubleClick’s
DART technology to deliver and serve their advertisements or manage
their paid search listings. DoubleClick’s DART products set
or recognize a unique, persistent cookie when an ad is displayed
or a paid listing is selected. The information that the DART cookie
helps to give marketers includes the number of unique users their
advertisements were displayed to, how many users clicked on their
Internet ads or paid listings, and which ads or paid listings
they clicked on.
Why does your cookie keep coming back after I delete it?
When you visit any website or search engine on which DoubleClick’s
DART technology is used, our servers will check to see if you
already have a DART cookie. If the servers do not receive a DART
cookie, the servers will try to set a cookie in response to your
browser’s “request” to view that Web page. If you
do not want a DART cookie with a unique value, you can obtain
a DoubleClick DART “opt out” cookie. Alternatively,
you can adjust your Internet browser’s settings for handling
cookies. This is explained in the next question.
How can I adjust my cookie settings to accept or decline cookies?
To eliminate cookies you may have currently accepted, and to
deny or limit cookies in the future, please follow one of these
procedures:
IMPORTANT: IF YOU DELETE YOUR OPT-OUT COOKIE, YOU WILL NEED TO
OPT-OUT AGAIN. IF YOUR BROWSER BLOCKS ALL OR THIRD-PARTY COOKIES,
YOU WILL BLOCK THE SETTING OF OPT-OUT COOKIES.
* If you are using Internet Explorer 6.0, go to the Tools menu,
then to Internet Options, then to the Privacy tab. This version
of Internet Explorer is the first to use P3P to distinguish between
types of cookies. P3P uses standardized privacy statements made
by the cookie issuer to manage your acceptance of cookies. Under
the “Privacy” tab, click on the “Advanced”
button. Select “Override automatic cookie handling”
and choose whether you want to accept, block or be prompted for
“First-party” and “Third-party Cookies.” If
you want to block all cookies coming from DoubleClick’s doubleclick.net
domain, go to the “Web Sites” section under the “Privacy”
tab and click the “Edit” button. In the “Address
of Web site” field, enter “doubleclick.net,” select
“Block,” click OK (menu will disappear); click OK again
and you will be back to the browser.
* If you are using Netscape 6.0+, go to “Edit” in the
menu bar, click on “Preferences,” click on “Advanced,”
and select the “Cookies” field. Now check either the
box that says, “Warn me before accepting a cookie” or
“Disable cookies.” Click on “OK.” Now go to
your “Start” button, click on “Find,” click
on “Files and Folders,” type “cookies.txt”
into the search box that appears, and click “Find Now.”
When the search results appear, drag all files listed, into the
“Recycle Bin.” Now shut down and restart your Netscape.
Depending on your earlier choice you will either be prompted by
new cookie sets or no cookies will be set or received.
* If you are using Mozilla or Safari, please go to their websites
to find out how to disable cookies in those programs.
What are Web beacons?
Web beacons are small strings of HTML code that are placed in
a Web page. They are sometimes called “clear GIFs” (Graphics
Interchange Format) or “pixel tags.” Web beacons are
most often used in conjunction with cookies. DoubleClick uses
Web beacons in connection with its products and services, including
ad serving and paid search listings (“DART Search”).
Because a Web beacon is only 1 pixel high by 1 pixel wide, it
appears invisible on your computer screen. If Web beacons were
made larger (e.g., 100 pixels high by 100 pixels wide), it would
take much longer for your Web page to load and would clutter up
the page that you have requested.
In 2002, working with a broad spectrum of companies, including
other technology companies, seal providers and websites, DoubleClick
helped draft “Best Practice” guidelines for disclosing
the use of Web beacons. Please click here to see these guidelines
– and a list of the companies that participated in developing
them.
What is “personally identifiable information” (“PII")?
“Personally identifiable information” is any information
that can identify or locate a particular person, including but
not limited to name, address, telephone number, email address,
social security number, bank account number or credit card number.
What is “non personally identifiable information” (“non-PII”)?
“Non-personally identifiable information” is information
that cannot identify a particular person. This type of information
includes a user’s Internet Service Provider, a computer’s
operating system and browser type, and a unique DoubleClick DART
cookie ID.
DoubleClick’s ad-serving and search products utilize non-PII.
Some of our clients may associate PII that you have given them
(for example, a customer number, if you have registered at or
purchased from their websites), with their advertising campaigns.
Although this customer number may be passed from the client to
DoubleClick’s ad servers during the ad delivery process,
DoubleClick cannot recognize this information as PII and cannot
link it to any person.
What is “sensitive information?”
To DoubleClick, “sensitive information” categorically
includes but is not limited to data related to an individual’s
health or medical condition, sexual behavior or orientation, or
detailed personal finances, information that appears to relate
to children under the age of 13 at the time of data collection;
and PII otherwise protected under federal or state law (for example,
cable subscriber information or video rental records). DoubleClick
does not use any “sensitive information” to target Internet
advertisements.
What is ad serving?
In order to support their content without charging visitors,
websites sell advertising space on their Web pages. Companies
like DoubleClick provide technology for the websites and advertisers
to use to display ads on the websites. DoubleClick’s ad servers
work at the direction – and on behalf – of our clients.
When you visit a website, your computer’s Internet browser
transmits a “request” to that website’s server,
“asking” that server to send you the Web page that you
are seeking. Most Web pages contain components that are pulled
from different sources. For example, a Web page at a news site
may get its weather section from one provider, its sports results
from a different source, and advertisements from other servers.
If the website is using DoubleClick’s technology to display
ads on its site, the Web page will contain coding that directs
your browser to fill the ad space on the Web page with content
from one of DoubleClick’s ad servers. DoubleClick’s
clients select the format, content, and location of the ads, as
well as the criteria for controlling which ads to show and when
to show them. DoubleClick’s ad-serving technology uses a
cookie to help clients determine what ads to display. When a “call”
is received by DoubleClick’s ad servers, the server checks
to see if the “calling” browser has sent a cookie with
the request for advertising. If the server doesn’t “see”
either a unique DoubleClick cookie or an opt-out cookie, after
“testing” to see whether the browser will accept cookies,
the server sets a unique DoubleClick ad cookie. If the browser
already has a unique DoubleClick ad cookie, the server “recognizes”
the cookie and uses the unique ID for targeting and reporting
purposes as specified by the DoubleClick client. If the browser
has an opt-out DoubleClick cookie, the server uses only the non-cookie
related information that is automatically transmitted in the Internet
environment (e.g., browser type, Internet service provider, and
information about the general content of the site or page displayed
on your browser) to determine which ad to show. Sometimes Web
beacons are used in conjunction with the DART cookie when clients
want more versatile targeting or reporting capabilities.
How does an ad-serving client use DoubleClick’s technology
to target or select which ad to deliver?
Our clients store their ads on DoubleClick’s ad servers.
When you visit a Web page on which a client is using DoubleClick
technology to deliver ads, coding that the website publisher placed
in the Web page tells your computer’s browser to send a request
for an ad to the DoubleClick ad server. When the DoubleClick ad
server receives a request, it will select an ad based on the criteria
that the client has chosen together with any information logged
against the unique cookie id.
For example, a client’s website may attract an audience
of mainly men, aged between 18 and 45, who are interested in sports,
fashion and electronic gadgets. The client will therefore approach
sports, fashion and electronic gadget retailers to see if they
would like to advertise on the site. Those retailers will provide
the client with ads, which the client will store on the DoubleClick
ad servers. The client will assign those ads specific codes, such
as sports = 1, fashion = 2, and electronic gadgets = 3. On the
pages where the website publisher wants to show all three categories
of ads, the website will install an ad tag that contains all three
codes. On pages of the website that the client thinks attracts
only men interested in sports, an ad tag that contains only the
code for sports, code 1, may be installed.
DoubleClick does not tell clients which criteria to select or
which advertisements to target against those criteria. Clients
choose the categories they wish to attach to the advertising that
they have contracted to show, what code(s) they wish to attach
to those categories, and which code(s) they wish to include in
each of their ad request tags. In their contracts with DoubleClick,
DoubleClick’s ad-serving clients promise not to use information
that DoubleClick could recognize as either “sensitive”
or “personally identifiable” to target ads.
What information is collected by a client using DoubleClick’s
ad serving technology?
Each time one of DoubleClick’s ad servers receives a request
for an ad or for a Web beacon, information about the request received
and the ad or Web beacon served – for example, the date,
the time, the website to which the ad or image was delivered,
the cookie ID to which the ad was shown, the operating system
which the browser was using – will be recorded.
Does DoubleClick itself do anything with this ad-serving information?
No. The information that is recorded on the DoubleClick servers
by our clients’ use of our technology belongs to our clients.
Although that information may be logged on a DoubleClick server,
DoubleClick’s relationship with the client is that of an agent
or processor. Consequently, DoubleClick does not own that information
and cannot, therefore, use that information for its own business
purposes or in any way not authorized by the relevant client.
DoubleClick clients do, however, give us permission to use statistical
or aggregate information derived from their use of the technology
– e.g., statistics about the number of ads served through
the technology per month or analyses about, for example, what
time of day is the best time to target certain types of ads.
Does DoubleClick sell the ad serving information to other companies?
No. The data that DoubleClick’s servers record during ad
serving belong to DoubleClick’s clients, and DoubleClick
cannot and does not sell that information to other companies.
DoubleClick can, however, use its aggregate analyses about the
effectiveness of ad campaigns to help clients develop more efficient
and successful campaigns.
What are pop-ups and why do I see pop up advertising?
A pop-up is basically the opening of a new window in your browser.
DoubleClick provides its ad-serving clients with a means of choosing
and reporting on ads. It is the website owners or the advertisers
with whom they contract that make the decisions about the format
of the ads. The advertisers choose whether they want to have banner
ads or pop ups delivered, and they use our technology to make
it happen. The website owners and advertisers choose the size
and frequency of pop-up ads. DoubleClick has no control over which
ad format website publishers or their advertisers choose.
Generally, there are a couple of different ways that you might
receive pop up advertising:
1. The site you are currently visiting has sold an advertising
opportunity to a marketer and that marketer has chosen to create
an advertisement that opens a new browser window. This is a form
of “traditional” Internet advertising.
2. You have some kind of ad-delivery software installed (intentionally
or unintentionally, knowingly or unknowingly) on your computer.
This type of software often comes bundled with freeware such as
P2P (Peer-to-Peer) music sharing applications. It may track the
sites you visit and scan their contents looking for triggers that
match criteria identified by advertisers that purchased space
from the software manufacturer. The software program will then
display advertisements on your monitor.
What is spyware?
This term has been applied to a very broad range of technologies
and activities — from the mere setting of a cookie to the surreptitious
installation of key-logging software on consumers’ computers.
There are many anti-spyware programs on the market and they each
have their own definition of “spyware”. For example,
some programs identify cookies as “spyware”, while others
do not. Some software programs that monitor the websites that
consumers visit in order to deliver context-based advertisements
have been categorized as “adware.” Many of these adware
programs are responsible for the pop-up advertisements that you
see.
DoubleClick does not consider its products either “spyware”
or “adware.” We believe that consumers should be provided
meaningful notice and choice with respect to information collected
and used about them.
Google, as a third-party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on your
site.
Google’s use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to your
users based on their visit to your sites and other sites on the
Internet.
Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the
Google ad and
content network privacy policy