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EPSILON PRIVACY POLICY FOR SERVICES


Hier auf Deutsch: https://legal.epsilon.com/eu/privacy-policy-services-de
En français ici : https://legal.epsilon.com/eu/privacy-poliicy-services-fr

Last Modified: 31/07/2024

Epsilon, formerly also known as Conversant, is an advertising company. We are part of the Publicis Groupe, headquartered in France but with operations around the world. Our services help businesses find customers and keep the internet free. We encourage you to read the whole notice but if you wish to jump to a certain subject, please use the table below.

Throughout this Privacy Policy we use several capitalised terms. You can find the definitions for these here.

Privacy commitment and scope of this Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy (“Privacy Policy”) describes how Personal Data is collected and used by Epsilon when providing our Services. We care about your privacy and we want you to understand how we process Personal Data and what choices you have with regards to it. We have taken steps to provide you with this information as clear and easy as possible, but if you have any questions you can always Contact us.

We believe that data protection is essential to the growth and prosperity of the Internet and that a personalised experience online can provide significant benefits to users if done properly. In accordance with these believes, Epsilon creates results for advertisers in revolutionary ways without compromising users’ privacy or data protection. 

By getting familiar with this Privacy Policy, you have taken the first step in understanding how advertising businesses such as ours help contribute to the Internet’s ability to remain a diverse ecosystem of free content, as well as provide a better digital browsing experience.

What does Epsilon do?

While you visit digital properties, such as websites and mobile applications, there are almost always third-parties working behind the scenes to help provide you with a great digital experience. These companies provide services such as analytics, advertising and fraud prevention for retailers, publishers, and other organisations. Epsilon is one of these companies and we help provide the advertising that keeps your favourite blogs free, your favourite stores in business, and your advertising experience more relevant.

Epsilon provides its clients with digital advertising and personalised content across the Internet. To make some of these things possible, and to make smarter decisions, we need to use information that is considered Personal Data.

IAB Europe and the Transparency & Consent Framework

The Interactive Advertising Bureau in Europe (“IAB EU”) launched its Transparency and Consent Framework (“TCF”) in April 2018. The TCF is an industry tool that supports companies within the digital advertising ecosystem to manage their compliance obligations under Data Protection Laws, and it provides a standardised way to provide notice and choice across the Internet. You can read more about the TCF here.

Epsilon participates in the IAB EU’s TCF and complies with its specifications and policies. Epsilon’s identification number as a vendor within the TCF is 24.

Device access

We will only use Cookies or otherwise access your device if you have provided us with consent to do so, as required by the ePrivacy Directive and/or the UK Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR). You may have provided us with consent through a CMP on our website, on one of our clients or partners digital properties or elsewhere across the Internet. You can review and change your choices at any time by clicking on “Review Consent Preferences” in the footer of our website, or by changing your choices in another CMP. Withdrawing your consent in this way will apply only on the website/app you are visiting. If you want to withdraw your consent to Epsilon across the internet, please visit this tool.

However, certain essential Cookies do not require your consent. This includes Cookies that are essential to comply with the GDPR’s security principle as well as Cookies that help ensure that content of a page loads quickly and effectively by distributing the workload across numerous computers.

What Personal Data do we process?

Pseudonymous Personal Data

Epsilon uses Tags and Cookies to collect Pseudonymous Personal Data about the browser or device you are using, including Visitor Data and information about your browsing behaviour, such as what digital properties that you have visited and online transactions that you have made. This type of Pseudonymous Personal Data is processed whenever you visit digital properties and open emails where our Tags are implemented, including digital properties belonging to our clients and partners such as high street retailers.

We are a part of the digital advertising ecosystem and involved in activities such as Real-Time-Bidding (“RTB”). RTB is a set of technologies and practices used in programmatic advertising that enables advertisers to compete for available digital advertising space and place online adverts on digital properties by automated means. RTB allows for certain information to be sent to participants of the digital advertising ecosystem in Bid Requests. Bid Requests normally contain information that constitutes Personal Data, such a Visitor Data. This information is used by participants to evaluate the bid opportunity and respond with a bid price to serve an advert on the digital property. We only process Pseudonymised Personal Data that we receive in Bid Requests.

We perform Cookie syncs with advertising exchanges and other partners, such as Eyeota, which means that we receive and share Cookie IDs or other pseudonymized identifiers with each other. This enables us to recognise information about the user and determine whether we want to respond to a Bid Request or not.

We also partner with third parties to receive Pseudonymous Personal Data about transactions made by individuals. This type of Personal Data is mainly Processed to enhance our understanding about what individuals are interested in and what they might purchase in the future, including to create a personalised advertising and content profile, select personalised adverting and content and to measure advertising performance. We combine this type of Personal Data with other categories of Personal Data that we Process.

All location data we process is limited to non-precise location data (as defined by IAB EU’s TCF).

Direct Identifiable Personal Data

Some of our clients provide Direct Identifiable Personal Data such as name, address, email address and associated transactional information, to us. We also receive Direct Identifiable Personal Data from third-party partners we contract with.

The Directly Identifiable Personal Data we receive from our clients and partners is referred to as data obtained offline or offline data sources in the IAB EU’s TCF, and in this Privacy Policy as “Offline Data”. We process the Offline Data in a separate environment, and it is pseudonymised before it is processed for the purposes below. We annually engage a third-party auditor to confirm this pseudonymisation process.

How Personal Data is used and lawful basis

Purpose

Description

Lawful basis

Use limited data to select advertising

Advertising presented to you can be based on limited data, such as the website or app you are using, your non-precise location, your device type or which content you are (or have been) interacting with (for example, to limit the number of times an ad is presented to you).

Consent

Create profiles for personalised advertising

Information about your online activity (such as forms you submit, content you look at) can be stored and combined with other information about you (for example, information on your previous activity on other websites or apps) or similar users. This is then used to build or improve a profile about you. Your profile can be used to present advertising that appears more relevant based on your possible interests.

Consent

Use profiles to select personalised advertising

Advertising presented to you can be based on your advertising profiles, which can reflect your activity on websites or apps (like the forms you submit, content you look at), possible interests and personal aspects.

Consent

Create profiles to personalise content

Information about your online activity (for instance, forms you submit, non-advertising content you look at) can be stored and combined with other information about you (such as your previous activity on other websites or apps) or similar users. This is then used to build or improve a profile about you. Your profile can be used to present content that appears more relevant based on your possible interests, such as by adapting the order in which content is shown to you, so that it is even easier for you to find content that matches your interests.

Consent

Use profiles to select personalised content

Content presented to you can be based on your content personalisation profiles, which can reflect your online activity (for instance, the forms you submit, content you look at), possible interests and personal aspects. This can for example be used to adapt the order in which content is shown to you, so that it is even easier for you to find (non-advertising) content that matches your interests.

Consent

Measure advertising performance

Information regarding which advertising is presented to you and how you interact with it can be used to determine how well an advert has worked for you or other users and whether the goals of the advertising were reached. For instance, whether you saw an ad, whether you clicked on it, whether it led you to buy a product or visit a website, etc. This is very helpful to understand the relevance of advertising campaigns.

Consent

Measure content performance

Information regarding which content is presented to you and how you interact with it can be used to determine whether the (non-advertising) content e.g. reached its intended audience and matched your interests. For instance, whether you read an article, watch a video, listen to a podcast or look at a product description, how long you spent on web pages you visit etc. This is very helpful to understand the relevance of (non-advertising) content that is shown to you.

Consent

Understand audiences through statistics or combinations of data from different sources

Reports can be generated based on the combination of data sets (like user profiles, statistics, market research, analytics data) regarding your interactions and those of other users with advertising or (non-advertising) content to identify common characteristics (for instance, to determine which target audiences are more receptive to an ad campaign or to certain contents).

Consent

Develop and improve services

Information about your activity, such as your interaction with ads or content, can be very helpful to improve our services and to build new products and services based on user interactions, the type of audience, etc. This specific purpose does not include the development or improvement of user profiles and identifiers.

Consent

Use limited data to select content

Content presented to you can be based on limited data, such as the website or app you are using, your non-precise location, your device type, or which content you are (or have been) interacting with (for example, to limit the number of times a video or an article is presented to you).

Consent

Ensure security, prevent and detect fraud, and fix errors

Your data can be used to monitor for and prevent unusual and possibly fraudulent activity (for example, regarding advertising, ad clicks by bots), and ensure systems and processes work properly and securely. It can also be used to correct any problems you may encounter in your interaction with the content and ad.

Legitimate Interest

Deliver and present advertising and content

Certain information (like an IP address or device capabilities) is used to ensure the technical compatibility of the content or advertising, and to facilitate the transmission of the content or ad to your device.

Legitimate Interest

Save and communicate privacy choices

The choices you make regarding the purposes and entities listed in this notice are saved and made available to those entities in the form of digital signals (such as a string of characters). This is necessary in order to enable both this service and those entities to respect such choices.

Legitimate Interest

In support of one or more of the purposes set out above we may use Personal Data that we hold to determine whether different devices are likely to belong to you or your household and to try and distinguish your device from other devices based on information it automatically sends, such as IP address or browser type. This helps us develop a predictive profile of your interests across these different devices, including making sure we do not show you the same advert too often.

Offline Data we receive from our clients and partners will, before it is pseudonymised, be processed based on legitimate interest for receiving and storing purposes and to create a profile. We will only combine (pseudonymised) Offline Data related to you with other Pseudonymous Personal Data that we hold and process it for the above purposes if you have given us your prior consent. (Pseudonymised) Offline Data can be combined with your online activity in support of one or more purposes set out above.

Epsilon’s legitimate interests for the purposes of (i) receiving and storing Offline Data; (ii) ensuring security, prevent fraud and debug; and (iii) for technically deliver ads or content include, providing our Services and ensuring that our clients are only paying for advertising that is viewed by a natural person (e.g. not a bot). Further information can be provided upon request.

Social media

We sometimes engage social media platforms to display direct marketing to you on their platform. We use “list-based” and “look-a-like” tools to do this. Using list-based tools involves the uploading of Personal Data to the social media platform in question (such as a list of email addresses). The platform then matches the uploaded Personal Data with its own user base. Any user that matches the uploaded list is added into a group that will be sent the selected marketing message. Look-a-like tools offer the ability to build other audiences based on the characteristics of an original audience that was created using a list-based tool. These audiences generally comprise of users that have not previously engaged, but who look like the list-based audience (i.e., they are users with similar interests, behaviours or characteristics). When creating this sort of audience, the social media platform uses Personal Data it has about other users of its platform to find users who match the interests and behaviours of users that are current customers. Examples include Facebook Custom Audiences or LinkedIn Contact Targeting. We will not undertake this processing unless you have provided us with consent for the purposes set out above, and we have contractual controls in place to ensure that the social media platform can only use the Personal Data we share to enable the provision of the Services. We are not responsible for the data practices of social media platforms and recommend you read their own privacy policies.

Who do we share Personal Data with?

We share your Personal Data:

  • With our Affiliates and processors that assist us in providing our Services.
  • With our clients. For example, we may share Personal Data collected by Tags on our clients’ digital properties to help our clients learn more about their visitors, and Personal Data collected when an advert is delivered to report on the performance of advertising and to help clients understand how often they are serving an advert to the same individual and to help them optimise.
  • With participants of the advertising ecosystem such as advertisers, publishers, advertising exchanges, data management platforms, demand side platforms and supply side platforms, to be able to participate in RTB activities.
  • With partners to enable personalised advertisements to be provided to users and visitors of their platforms. Partners include, but are not limited to, ITV.
  • With the Abacus Alliance UK, which is a cooperative operated by another part of Epsilon. Personal Data will be used by Abacus Alliance UK to provide participating clients with better insight into their customers and assess, for example, whether an individual should be included on a mailing list for a specific postal marketing campaign. More information about how the Abacus Alliance UK processes your Personal Data and how to exercise any rights can be found here.
  • With social media platforms as described above.
  • Third-parties in the event of any reorganisation, merger, sale, joint venture, assignment, transfer or other disposition of all or any portion of our business, assets or stocks (including in connection with any bankruptcy or similar proceedings).
  • As we believe necessary and appropriate: (a) under applicable law; (b) to comply with legal processes and obligations; (c) to respond to requests from public and governmental authorities including public and government authorities outside your country of residence; (d) to enforce our terms and conditions; (e) to protect our operations; (f) to protect our rights, privacy, safety or property; and (g) to allow us to pursue available remedies or limit the damages that we may sustain.

How long do we keep Personal Data?

We retain all Personal Data in accordance with our data retention policy which abides by applicable law. The retention period depends on the type of data. For example, we retain non-transactional Pseudonymous Personal Data we collect or receive online or through Bid Requests for no more than eighteen (18) months.

Your rights

In situations when we rely on consent to process your Personal Data you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. You can do that via the “Review Consent Preferences” in the footer of our website or via any CMP connected to the IAB EU’s TCF. A CMP will usually pop up on an EU/UK website you have not visited before that partners with advertising companies to provide you with personalised advertising and a better digital experience. Withdrawing your consent in this way will apply only on the website/app you are visiting. If you want to withdraw your consent to Epsilon across the internet, please visit our browser and device based tool here and our email based tool here.

You may also visit the European Digital Advertising Alliance opt-out page here. To learn how to opt out of receiving relevant advertisements on mobile applications, please visit this page.

We understand that you may be interested to know what Personal Data we hold about you and which advertising interest segments we believe to be connected to you (access). You can view this information and even delete it if you choose to do so by clicking here.

If you wish to exercise any other rights you might under Data Protection Laws (including rectification, portability and restriction), please Contact Us.

International transfers

In order to provide our Services, we transfer Personal Data to, and Process Personal Data in, countries outside the European Union (EU), the European Economic Area (EEA) and the United Kingdom. More specifically our servers are located in Ireland, Netherlands, Singapore and the United States, and our processors operate around the world including the United States and India.

We have taken appropriate and suitable safeguards to ensure that your Personal Data will remain protected when transferred outside EU/EEA and the United Kingdom. This includes implementing Standard Contractual Clauses for transfers of Personal Data adopted by the European Commission and/or the United Kingdom. Further information about our international transfers as well as the safeguards in place can be provided upon request.

Security

We have implemented appropriate technical and organisational security measures to protect the Personal Data in our care, both during transmission and once we receive it. This includes physical and technical security measures to protect our Personal Data from accidental or unlawful destruction, loss, or alteration, and from unauthorised disclosure or access. Although, please note that no method of transmitting information over the Internet or storing information is completely secure.

Self-regulation

Our industry has a rigorous voluntary self-regulatory regime, and we are active members of industry groups such as the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe (IAB EU), Interactive Advertising Bureau UK (IAB UK), Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA), European Digital Advertising Alliance (EDAA) and Digital Advertising Alliance of Canada (DAAC). These groups promulgate codes of conduct and principles that impose requirements on participating members such as transparency and choice around the use of Personal Data for interest-based advertising, and some even require regular audits of member privacy practices. Such codes and principles include the DAA Self-Regulatory Principles, the EDAA Self-Regulatory Principles, and the DAAC Self-Regulatory Principles, which we all support.

Contact us

Epsilon International UK Ltd is the controller of the Personal Data that we process as described in this Privacy Policy. If you have any question about the processing, please Contact Us.

Our Data Protection Officer is tasked with informing and advising us on the obligations that apply to us under Data Protection Laws, as well as monitoring our compliance with the same. If you need to contact our Data Protection Officer, please email us here. However, we respectfully ask that you only contact our Data Protection Officer regarding urgent matters relating to data protection.

As an EU resident, you have the right to report a concern to your country’s Data Protection Authority.  UK residents can report a concern to the Information Commissioner’s Office. However, we respectfully request that you contact us first so that we can assist you.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may occasionally make changes to this Privacy Policy. If we do, we will take appropriate measures to inform you, consistent with the significance of the changes we make, and update the “Last Modified” date above.

Definitions used in this Privacy Policy

The technical nature of our Services means we need to keep referring to complex concepts. Capitalised words have the following meanings:

“Affiliates” means any corporation which controls, is controlled by, or is under common control with Epsilon.

“Cookies” are small text files that are downloaded and stored onto your device (e.g. a computer or smartphone). Cookies allow us to recognise your device and store information about your preferences or past actions. In this Privacy Policy the definition of “Cookies” includes similar technologies that can write or read information on your device such as “Local Shared Objects” (sometimes called Flash Cookies), pixels and web-beacons. For more details on the Cookies we set for our Services, click here.

“Data Protection Laws” means (i) EU Regulation 2016/679 and the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) as tailored by the UK Data Protection Act 2018 (together “GDPR”); (ii) EU Directive 2002/58/EC (ePrivacy Directive); (iii) the UK Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003; and (iv) any and all applicable national data protection laws made under or pursuant to (i) or (iii); in each case as may be amended or superseded from time to time.

“Device IDs” are unique identifiers associated with your device. These identifiers are assigned by your device’s operating system, such as Apple’s iOS and Google’s Play Services for Android. Device IDs can be reset in your device settings. 

“Directly Identifiable Personal Data” is Personal Data that directly identifies an individual. This type of Persona Data includes information such as full name, home address, telephone number, and email address.

“Epsilon” means Epsilon International UK Ltd with company number 03610044, whose registered address is 1st Floor 2 Television Centre, 101 Wood Lane, London, England, W12 7FR.

“Visitor Data” includes (i) information that is sent to us by digital properties that have our Tags implemented, such as browser type, browser time, time of access, screen resolution, IP address, referring site URL, current site URL, and search strings; and (ii) information sent to us by advertising exchanges via "Bid Requests", which may include the information in (i) above and other information such as IP addresses, Device IDs, Cookie IDs, non-precise location data, demographic data and other information including audience segmentation. Visitor Data normally constitutes Personal Data.

“Personal Data” means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person. Information such as name, identification number, location data and an online identifier is considered Personal Data.

“Pseudonymous Personal Data” is Personal Data that cannot be attributed to a specific individual without the use of additional information, for example 'John Smith' converted to “#12345”. Online identifiers such as Cookie IDs and Device IDs are usually considered Pseudonymous Personal Data.

“Services” means the adverting services that we provide to our clients, including services referred to as “Discovery”, “Prospect”, “Digital Media Solutions”, “CitrusAd” and other services that utilises our identity graph/CORE ID. The definition of “Services” does not include services that Epsilon provides to its clients as a processor (as defined by GDPR), including services referred to as “Messaging”, “Loyalty” and the “Abacus Alliance UK”.

“Tags” are tiny snippets of code inserted into a digital property that is used to collect data related to a visit. In this Privacy Policy, the definition of “Tags” includes the use of an SDK (Software Development Kit) to enable the same functionality in mobile applications.