898636 - Google AdWords Campaign Review of Targeting

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Privacy Graveyard :: Initiative Review, task)

Description

[Kristin Baird]

Hi Stacy,

We are diving into some data we now have from our Google AdWords campaign. The data is being collected in Google Analytics. The data is showing us that approximately 50% or more of the people seeing our ads on Google are using Firefox. The goal of the campaign is to drive new downloads/installs of Firefox for Desktop. We want to revisit targeting through Google AdWords. If possible and aligns with our privacy policy we'd like to be able to have the people using Firefox not see the ads as its kind of a waste of money for us to advertise a "download Firefox" message to them. We are currently running a test that will last for another 10 days. I realize this is really tight timing but if we can go ahead and use targeting to exclude Firefox users we'd like to be able to do that. Please let us know if you need any more information from us. We are happy to provide whatever you need. 

Thanks,
Kristin

Comment 1

[Stacy Martin [:stacy]]

Hi Kristin,

Can you describe how Google AdWords does their targeting?

Comment 2

[Kristin Baird]

H Stacy,

Here is a link to more info on enhanced campaigns on Google: 

https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2909484

Here is a link to more detailed info: 
https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/1704368?hl=en

In reading through this it might be easier to get on the phone with someone from Google. If that's the case let me know and I am sure we can set something up with our ad rep.

Thanks,
Kristin

Comment 3

[Stacy Martin [:stacy]]

Hi Kristin - Yes, I think it would be great to have phone call.  We need to include a technical privacy person - maybe Monica Chew.

From my non-technical read, my questions would be how they do device targeting and audience targeting.  We'll need to compare it to our Ad Standards document.

Here's a summary:

Tracking cookie -related guidelines include:

·Tracking or collecting data is only acceptable on an aggregate, non-user specific level.

·Tracking or collecting data is only permissible for basic campaign tracking and billing.

·Cookies must not save any data that could identify an individual.

·It is legitimate to target advertising to the users immediate present .

·It is not legitimate to capture behavioral data to personalize or select future ads.

·Do not collect or create identifiers unique to a specific device, user-agent, or person

·Mozilla prefers to use first-party cookies set from a Mozilla domain


·All cookies should expire within 3 days of the end of the associated campaign.


·Tracking images (pixels) should only be placed on campaign-specific landing pages.

Do Not Use:

·behavioral targeting

·demographic targeting

·psychographic targeting

·re-targeting

Acceptable Targeting Practices:

·browser or user-agent targeting

·geo-IP targeting

·targeting based on time-zone

·contextual targeting

Comment 4

[John Jensen]

Hi Stacy,

The targeting that is to be employed is:

a) browser version  ("Windows browsers that are not Firefox")
b) geo-IP targeting ("In Brazil", "in Indonesia")

... that's it. There will be no behavioural, demographic, etc targeting.

John

Comment 5

[[:mmc] Monica Chew (no longer reading bugmail)]

Hi Stacy,

Based on John's feedback, I think that this type of targeting meets the criteria for the ad standards in comment 3 (except for "It is legitimate to target advertising to the users immediate present" which I didn't understand)

The one thing that I am not sure of is the 3-day cookie requirement. We can control cookie expiration times on domains that we own, but not on other domains. I am not sure if Adwords has a provision for setting cookie lifetimes.

Good luck,
Monica

Comment 6

[Stacy Martin [:stacy]]

Hi Monica and John - Thank you for the feedback.  

John, can you check on cookie expiration? Let's see how close they are to meeting this.  Here's more info.

Cookie Expiration 
All cookies should expire within 3 days of the end of the associated ad campaign. This means that cookies set at different times during the campaign should have different validity periods. A cookie set on the first day of a three week campaign could have a three-week validity period, while one set on the last day, might only be valid for 48h.  

Monica, Tom wrote that line about the "immediate present".  I believe he meant that it's OK to target based on what they're doing on a particular page at a particular time, but no targeting across time and sites (i.e. no profiling. Mozilla advertising campaigns should not use any targeting based on users past actions, but may target based on users immediate present. 

Here's more info: 

No Profiling
As mentioned earlier in this document, no data specific to a particular user, user-agent, or device should be collected and stored. Similarly, publishers must not profile users based on Mozilla advertising campaigns, at any time. In particular, there should be no tracking based on a device’s unique ID.

It sounds like AdWords falls into the acceptable targeting practices, so the only remaining question is the cookie expirations.

Comment 7

[Stacy Martin [:stacy]]

Hi John - Were we able to get an answer on the cookie expirations?

Comment 8

[John Jensen]

(In reply to Stacy Martin [:stacy] from comment #7)
> Hi John - Were we able to get an answer on the cookie expirations?

Sorry Stacy, I missed this.

I will search for Google's AdWords cookie policy and post a link here.

John

Comment 9

[John Jensen]

All the searching I do points me here:

http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/technologies/ads/

Kristin also posted some links in comment #2.

John

Comment 10

[Stacy Martin [:stacy]]

Hi Kristin and John - Can you ask the Google rep if he can get us an answer on cookie expiration?  I think that's easier than trying to find it in the documentation.  I don't see it there.

Comment 11

[Kristin Baird]

Yep, asking Google rep. Stay tuned.

Comment 12

[Kristin Baird]

Hey stacey,

Apologies for the delay on this. Here's the feedback Nobox received from our Google rep: 

Cookie expiration dates
AdWords cookies expire 30 days after a customer's click, while Analytics uses a cookie that lasts six months to two years. That means if a customer completed a conversion 31 days after clicking on an AdWords ad, the conversion wouldn't be recorded in AdWords but would be in Analytics.

Comment 13

[Stacy Martin [:stacy]]

Thank you, Kristin.  I think this is OK.  I'm going to close out the review as resolved, given that Monica and I have both reviewed it and don't have strong concerns.  

I see the 3 day cookie expiration as more of an ideal, but I don't think 30 days is completely unreasonable. 

I Googled cookie expiration and found an old bug for bugzilla cookies. (Bug 165921 - Change cookie expiration to something more reasonable.)  Back in 2002, the thought was "Probably the right interval is >24 hours but <60 days."  An update from 2012 said "Currently, all other cookies are set as being valid till 2038." 

I know it's not an apples to apples to comparison, but it leads me to believe that 30 days isn't out of the ballpark, especially given Monica's concerns with whether we can really control cookie expiration outside of our domain.  Just wanted to record the decision logic here.  As Monica noted, this type of targeting seems to meet the criteria for the ad standards.

Comment 14

[Kristin Baird]

ok, thanks.