Privacy Policy for Google Ads Remarketing

Remarketing is one of the most powerful tools inside the Google Adwords kit. Remarketing is also known as retargeting.

Google is informing all business owners that their Privacy Policies must be updated once they sign-up for AdWords:

While remarketing can be a great way to attract past visitors back to your site, you should inform these people that you gather information for remarketing or similar audiences on your website.

How does remarketing work? It's simple: Google AdWords Remarketing keeps track of everyone who visits your website and follows these users wherever they go on other websites to show your ads.

Let's say your website is running a remarketing campaign with Google AdWords (or through the Google Analytics List) and a visitor just left your web site for another website, without buying your product.

Google remembers this visit and will display the ads you want within the websites that this specific user is visiting. Google can only show the ads on websites that are part of the Google Display Network.

Google AdWords keeps track of everyone through their browser's cookies. The search giant describes a cookie as:

A randomly generated 18 digit ID number that uniquely identifies a web browser on a specific computer, but isn't used to identify an individual person. If you use multiple browsers and a different computer at home and at work, each one has a different cookie.

According to stats, 75 percent of shopping carts and 50 percent of web forms get abandoned.

Recovering them through this kind of marketing is a really profitable business. Statistics show that remarketing can recover an average of 10 percent to 30 percent of abandoners.

Requirements for AdWords remarketing

Setting up a remarketing campaign with AdWords works similarly to setting up a Display Network campaign, but the difference is in the target users who will see your ads.

The target users are the users who came to your website and didn't complete a certain action you wanted, e.g. checkout, brought this product etc. You can simply target these users regardless if they completed a certain action or not.

Before you set up your campaign, remember to:

  1. Update your Privacy Policy.
  2. Give users the option to opt out. Users should be informed that they can opt out of your remarketing campaign and how they can do so.

    You can add this directly in the Privacy Policy or set-up a new page.

    AdRoll is providing users with a simple link to opt-out of their remarketing cookies through the Adjust Ad Preferences link in the footer of their website:

  3. AdRoll - Adjust Ad Preferences Link

  4. Add the code. Running the remarketing campaign requires you to add a snippet code on your website that Google provides in your AdWords dashboard.

    This code is pretty much like the Google Analytics or Conversion Tracking Code that you have probably implemented already on your website.

    After the code is generated, Google will give you the chance to state how long you want to have the cookie active (30 or 90 days etc.)

Updating your Privacy Policy is mandatory by Google when you sign-up to AdWords remarketing.

In your Privacy Policy, you need to inform users that:

  • You use remarketing to advertise across web sites
  • Google (and other similar third parties, if you use them) will show ads across web sites that your users are visiting
  • These ads shown across other web sites are based on a user's past visits to your web site by using cookies
  • How users can opt out of your remarketing campaign by visiting Google's Ads Settings page

Here's exactly what Google says:

An appropriate description of how you're using this kind of service or similar audiences to advertise online. A message about how third-party vendors, including Google, show your ads on sites across the Internet. A message about how third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on someone's past visits to your website. Information about how your visitors can opt-out of Google's use of cookies by visiting Google's Ads Settings. Alternatively, you can point your visitors to opt out of a third-party vendor's use of cookies by visiting the Network Advertising Initiative opt-out page.

You can inform users to visit Google's http://www.google.com/settings/Ads Settings page and provide a direct link to the page so they can opt out of Google's use of cookies for this kind of service.

You're also required to comply with the "EU Cookies Directive" if you're based in the EU or have customers in the EU.

The EU directive requires you to provide clear notice to users that cookies are in use on your website and/or through your mobile app. You can provide this kind of notice by displaying a pop-up banner or a notification to users the first time they visit your website.

BBC Notification: Cookies on website

You don't have mention what kind of cookies you're using. You just have to let users know that cookies are used. In the linked Privacy Policy or Cookies Policy from this type of notice, you can get into the details of what kind of cookies you and the third-parties you've partnered with are using.

Restrictions

It's important to consider the restrictions remarketing campaigns have. As part of your campaign, you need to make sure that you do not include sensitive information about your customers:

  • Interest or participation in adult activities
  • Sexual behavior or orientation
  • Racial or ethnic information
  • Political affiliation
  • Trade union membership or affiliation
  • Religion or religious belief
  • Negative financial status or situation
  • Health or medical information health-related group
  • Status as a child under 13
  • The commission or alleged commission of any crime

You're restricted to do any of the following:

  • Running ads that collect personally information from users
  • Run ads on web sites that are directed towards children under 13 or ask for personal information from children under 13. Businesses from the US must comply with the COPPA law if they collect personal information from kids under 13.
  • Creating the campaign that tries to reach users in ways that are prohibited
  • Running ads that would imply sensitive information about a visitor
  • Including forbidden products (see the forbidden categories list as defined by Google AdWords) in the ads you're running

Examples of Privacy Policy clauses

Here are a couple of remarketing clauses samples that you can include in your own Privacy Policy:

AdRoll is a marketing platform that enables businesses to start remarketing on Facebook, Twitter etc. using their platform.

They show ads from businesses that are running campaigns on their platform, but AdRoll itself also use this kind of service to show you ads if you visited www.adroll.com, i.e. you showed interested in their service.

Here is their sample clause:

AdRoll collects data about your activities that does not personally or directly identify you when you visit our website, the website of entities for which we serve advertisements (our "Advertisers"), or the websites and online services where we display advertisements ("Publishers"). This information may include the content you view, the date and time that you view this content, the products you purchase, or your location information associated with your IP address. We use the information we collect to serve you more relevant advertisements (referred to as "Retargeting"). We collect information about where you saw the ads we serve you and what ads you clicked on.
From the Privacy Policy of AdRoll

Notice that AdRoll include Publishers to inform users that their platform also includes other businesses.

After you visit www.adroll.com and log on Facebook, for example, you'll see the remarketing ad from AdRoll:

The remarketing ad on Facebook by AdRoll

Storkie is informing how users can opt-out of Google cookies, but isn't stating if Storkie is running a remarketing Google AdWords campaign for users visiting www.storkie.com:

Users may opt out of Google's use of cookies by visiting the Google Advertising Opt-out Page. Users may opt out of Google Analytics by visiting the Google Analytics Opt-out Page. Users may opt out of third party vendor use of cookies by visiting the Network Advertising Initiative Opt-out Page.

Sierra Trading Post is informing users about their use of Google AdWords remarketing and how users can opt-out of the cookies set by Google in their Privacy Notice page:

We use Google Analytics' 3rd-party audience data such as age, gender, and interests to better understanding the behavior of our customers and work with companies that collect information about your online activities to provide advertising targeted to suit your interests and preferences. For example, you may see certain ads on this website or other websites because we contract with Google and other similar companies to target our ads based on information we or they have collected, including information that was collected through automated means (such as cookies and web beacons). These companies also use automated technologies to collect information when you click on our ads, which helps track and manage the effectiveness of our marketing efforts.

You may opt out of the automated collection of information by third-party ad networks for the purpose of delivering advertisements tailored to your interests, by visiting the consumer opt-out page for the Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising at http://www.aboutads.info/choices/ and edit or opt-out your Google Display Network ads' preferences at http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/.

Here's a simple clause as given by the Home Security Store web site:

ome Security Store, Inc. websites use third-party vendors, including Google, which use cookies to serve the Google Trusted Store badge and other ads based on a user's prior visits to our website. These ads may contain cookies. While we use cookies in other parts of our Website, cookies received with banner ads are collected by our ad company, and we do not have access to this information. For further information regarding the privacy practices of our advertisement provider, please visit http://www.google.com/privacypolicy.html Users may opt out of Google's use of cookies by visiting the Google advertising opt-out page.