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 (available in English only) – 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 precisely
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, detailed personal finances, information that appears to relate to
children under the age of 13 at the time of data collection or Information that
describes the precise real-time geographic location of an individual derived through
location-based services such as through GPS-enabled devices; 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:
-
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.
-
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.