Our commitment to protecting people’s privacy online is as serious as our dedication to providing the most relevant advertising.
Specific Media consider the issues around user privacy on the internet very carefully and the following is intended to be a plain English explanation of the guidelines we currently employ. We always welcome comments on our policy and constantly strive to maintain a policy which improves the service we provide to advertisers, publishers and web users in general.
What we do
Specific Media is an online advertising network. We work with hundreds of websites in the US, UK, France and Germany taking display (image) advertising space and selling it in carefully targeted packages to advertisers and agencies. The targeting options we offer range from site content level, where an advertiser may choose to display on a specific category of sites, e.g. sports sites, to more complicated targeting involving keywords or user behaviour. As we target, we aim to identify the sites and users that are most likely to create a response to an advertiser's campaign.
Tracking
To gain a greater understanding of a site's performance, or a user's likely interests, we use a variety of tracking technologies the websites on our network which the user visited previously and/or where the user clicked on an advert. Using this information, we can calculate which websites and/or which profile of user is likely to best respond to a particular campaign. as follows:
Performance Tracking
We monitor the sales, signups or visits to certain pages on our advertisers' websites. We connect these page 'hits' back to Ad Display Counting. We use cookies to make sure users see particular adverts a limited number of times. This limit is agreed by the advertiser, Specific Media and the publisher and this prevents users repeatedly seeing the same advert.
Behavioural Profiling
To create a behavioural profile, we log which websites' users have seen our adverts. This is important - we don't monitor your internet usage on any website or any other activity other than when you visit a website where we display an ad to you. Depending on the content of the sites you visit, we build an anonymous profile which contains information on your potential interests and an estimated demographic. For example, if you visit a sports site within our network then we may classify you as interested in sport.
How we use this data
Specific Media uses the information collected to target advertising campaigns more effectively. The aim is for you to see adverts which you are more likely to be interested in rather than ads that you aren't. We do this by comparing the information relating to your anonymous profile against our selection of advert campaigns and choosing the most suitable advert. It's important to understand that Specific Media can only create these profiles and display ads to you when you visit an ad-funded website which we work with. In the majority of cases, the website you view will not charge you, but is being funded by the ads that you view. The more effective the advertising on a site, the more money it can generate. Specific Media feel that by creating only anonymous profiles we can offer increased performance to our advertisers and enhanced revenues for our websites, without crossing the line and 'spying' on you.
Personally Identifiable Consumer Data (PII)
The IAB (Internet Advertising Bureau), which is a trade association for the internet marketing industry, define personally identifiable information as 'information that can be traced back to a specific user and provide personal information such as name, address, phone number, etc'. In other words, it's information about you that can identify you as a person rather than an anonymous profile. All our profiles are anonymous. For us, they are nothing more than a number with which we associate interests and/or an estimated demographic profile. Specific Media never attempt to establish any link between the anonymous user profiles we create and personally identifiable information.
Cookies
Cookies are small text files that are stored within a folder on your computer and are used only by your internet browser. They take up a tiny amount of space on your computer (less than a regular webpage without images does) and can be used to uniquely, but anonymously, identify your computer. Most websites use cookies to identify users and improve the user experience. The cookies Specific Media use are technically the same. The Specific Media cookie does not harm your computer in any way or provide us with any information about your identity. A couple of so called spyware software packages classify the Specific Media cookie as spyware or adware. This is not the case. The general definition of spyware/adware is that of a software package installed on your computer for purposes of monitoring all your internet or general computer activity. We do not now and never have used such methods and the classification is incorrect. We do not install software of any kind on your computer and have no ability to monitor or track your general computer or internet usage.
Third Party Information Gathering
Our website may contain content and advertisements from third parties that may perform user activity tracking other than that described herein. These other sites may place their own cookies on your computer, collect data or solicit personal information. For more information about each third party content provider, cookies, and how to "opt-out", please refer to such third party advertiser's privacy policy. Our website may contain links to other websites on the Web. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other websites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every website that collects personally identifiable information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by Specific Media.
Correspondence
If you contact us, we may keep a record of that correspondence and we may collect your email address.
Children's Privacy
Specific Media is very sensitive to the issue of children's privacy. Specific Media's websites, products, and services are neither developed for, nor directed at, children. If you believe your child has provided Specific Media with personally identifiable data, or registered at one of Specific Media's websites, and you would like to have the data removed, please contact us.
Sale of Assets
In the event that another company acquires all or substantially all of the assets related to the business, we reserve the right to include any or all stored personal information among the assets transferred to the acquiring company.
Changes to Privacy Policy
This privacy policy is subject to change without notice. We may change our policy at any time by posting a new version of it on our website.
Effective Date
The privacy policy was last revised on June 1, 2008.
Questions and Comments
Questions and comments about your privacy policy should be directed to privacy@specificmedia.com or mailed to Privacy Officer, Specific Media, Inc, 4 Park Plaza, Suite 1900, Irvine CA 92614.
Copyright © 2008 Specific Media, Inc.