Privacy Notice

01 Who we are and what this notice covers

Acceptable Ads Committee, Inc. (“AAC”, “Committee”, “we”, “us”) is a nonprofit organisation incorporated in the United States. The AAC is an independent nonprofit that sets and oversees the Acceptable Ads Standard.

This Privacy Notice applies to personal information we handle through:

• our website, acceptableadscommittee.org;
• our blog, blog.acceptableadscommittee.org;
• membership of the Committee, including applications;
• our newsletter;
• research we commission or support;
• our events; and
• our communications with people and organisations interested in our work (“stakeholders”).

It does not cover third-party websites or services, such as social media and video platforms; their own privacy notices apply. A particular study or event may come with its own privacy information, which applies alongside this notice.

02 Information we collect and where it comes from

Information you give us

• Contact form. Your first and last name, email address and message, and optionally your organisation, job title and website.
• Applications. If you apply to join the Committee, also the member group you are applying to and why you want to join.
• Newsletter. Your name and email address.
• Events. Your name, contact details and organisation, and any other information the registration asks for.
• Correspondence. Whatever you choose to include when you email or otherwise communicate with us.

Information about your participation

If you or your organisation are members, we keep records of your membership, including your member group, your role (for example, as a representative) and your participation in Committee meetings, votes and elections under our Bylaws.

Information from others

• From your organisation, for example when it names you as its representative or contact.
• From research partners, normally as aggregated or anonymised findings (see section 4).

Technical and usage information

When you visit our website or blog, your browser automatically sends the information any website receives, such as your IP address, browser and device type, language, the page requested and the referring page. Section 5 explains how this is used to run our sites, and section 6 explains analytics.

You do not have to give us personal information to read our website or blog. If you do not give us your name and email address, we cannot reply to an inquiry or consider an application.

03 How we use information

We use personal information to:

• reply to your messages and follow up on inquiries;
• consider applications to join the Committee, and run membership under our Bylaws, including meetings, elections and votes;
• publish the governance records that our Bylaws require us to make public (see section 4);
• send our newsletter to people who have subscribed, and understand which content interests readers;
• organise events and communicate with participants;
• commission, support and use research;
• communicate with stakeholders about the Acceptable Ads Standard and our work;
• host, deliver and secure our website and blog, including preventing spam and abuse;
• understand how our website and blog are used, so we can improve them (see section 6); and
• meet legal obligations, and establish or defend legal claims.

We do not use personal information for targeted advertising, and we do not sell it.

04 Our activities in more detail

Inquiries and applications

Messages sent through the contact form are delivered to us by email and followed up by the AAC team member who handles inquiries. Sending an inquiry or application does not subscribe you to our newsletter.

We may ask you to confirm your email address before your message reaches us, by emailing you a link. Confirmation links expire after 24 hours, and unconfirmed submissions are automatically deleted shortly afterward.

Membership and published information

Transparency is one of the Committee’s aims. Our Bylaws require us to make the Committee’s activity available to the public on our website, including applications to join member groups; nominations, appointments, resignations and terminations; proposals and records of votes cast; agendas and minutes; and representative profiles. If you or your organisation apply to join the Committee, or you serve as a representative, information such as your name, organisation and role, and how you or your organisation voted, may therefore be published. We also share membership information within the Committee as its work under the Bylaws requires.

Newsletter

We send our newsletter only to people who have subscribed. An email service provider sends it on our behalf. Each newsletter includes an unsubscribe link, and you can also unsubscribe by contacting us. Our newsletter service tells us whether newsletters are opened and which links in them are clicked, which helps us understand what interests our readers.

Research

We commission and support research about online advertising and user experience. Arrangements vary from study to study: research partners usually carry out the studies, and we normally receive aggregated or anonymised findings. People do not take part in research through our website. Where a study involves participants, the information given to them for that study explains how their information is handled. If we ever receive identifiable information about participants in a particular study, we will use it only for the purposes described for that study.

Events

When we run or take part in events, we use registration and participation information to organise the event, communicate with participants and follow up afterwards. Depending on the event, it may be photographed, recorded or streamed; if so, we tell participants ahead of time.

Stakeholder communications

We correspond with publishers, advertisers, ad-tech and browser companies, researchers, user advocates and others interested in our work. We use business contact details and the content of our correspondence to carry on those discussions and keep a record of them.

Social media

We have pages on professional social networks. If you interact with them, the network processes your information under its own privacy policy. We may see the information you make visible to us there, and statistics the network provides about our page.

05 How our website and blog work

Hosting, security and email

This processing is needed to provide our sites and forms, and does not depend on your analytics choice.

• Hosting. Our website and blog are hosted by service providers, which use the technical information described in section 2 to deliver pages, protect our sites against attacks and abuse, and keep service logs. Email addresses shown on our website are protected from automated harvesting.
• Spam protection. Our contact form uses a security service to tell people apart from automated traffic. It processes information such as your IP address and browser details for that purpose.
• Email delivery. Form submissions reach us through an email delivery service, and our email is handled by our email provider.
• Your choices. We store your analytics choice on your device so we can respect it (see section 6).

Videos

Some pages include videos from external video services, which load when you scroll to them. The video service receives your IP address and information about your device and how you use the video, and may store information on your device. It uses this information under its own privacy policy, including for its own purposes.

06 Analytics and Cookie settings

• What analytics does. We use an analytics service to understand how our website and blog are used, such as which pages are viewed, which links are followed and which files are downloaded. We use this to improve our sites.
• What we do not do with it. We do not send it the contents of forms, and advertising features are off. We do not use analytics to identify you or to advertise to you. The analytics service processes this information on our behalf.
• When analytics is on.
  • United States and Canada (outside Quebec): if we can tell from your IP address that you are visiting from the United States, or from a Canadian province or territory other than Quebec, analytics is on by default. We let you know when you first visit, and you can turn it off at any time.
  • Everywhere else: including Quebec and any visit where we cannot tell your location reliably, analytics is off unless you accept it.
  • Global Privacy Control: if your browser sends this signal, analytics stays off, even if you accepted it before.
  • We use your approximate location only to decide which of these applies, and we do not keep it.
• Your choice. You can turn analytics on or off at any time under Cookie settings, at the bottom of every page, or with the button below. Your choice applies on both our website and our blog, and takes priority over the default for your region.
• How long things are kept. We remember your choice for up to 180 days; a choice to keep analytics off is renewed when you return. When analytics is on, the analytics service uses cookies that can last up to two years, and we delete them from our sites when analytics is turned off.
• Turning analytics off stops collection from then on; it does not delete information already collected.
• Analytics retention. We have set our analytics service to keep detailed analytics records for 14 months. After that period, the service removes them through its regular deletion process. Standard summary reports are not subject to that setting and may be kept longer.

Change cookie settings

07 How we share information

In our ordinary operations, we share personal information only in these ways:

• With service providers that act for us and process personal information to provide services to us, such as hosting and security, email delivery and email, newsletter sending, event tools and analytics.
• With external services that use information for their own purposes, under their own privacy policies: video services when a video loads, and social networks when you interact with our pages there. We do not control how these services use the information.
• By publication, where our Bylaws require us to publish governance records (see section 4).
• Where the law requires it, or where it is needed to protect rights, safety or security, or to establish or defend legal claims.
• With your agreement, or at your direction.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not use or share it for targeted advertising.

08 How long we keep information

We keep personal information only as long as we need it for the purpose we collected it for, and as long as the law requires.

• Inquiries are kept while we follow up, and for as long as needed to deal with related matters. Submissions that are never confirmed are automatically deleted shortly after their confirmation link expires.
• Membership records are kept while the membership lasts and afterwards for as long as needed for the Committee’s records and legal obligations. Governance records published under our Bylaws may remain available as part of the Committee’s public record.
• Newsletter subscriptions are kept until you unsubscribe. After that, we may keep a minimal record, such as your email address and the fact that you unsubscribed, so we can respect your choice.
• Event information is kept for as long as needed to run and follow up on the event.
• Analytics information is kept as described in section 6.

When we no longer need information, we delete it or make it anonymous.

09 International processing

We are based in the United States. Personal information we collect is processed in the United States and in other countries where our service providers operate, whose data protection laws may differ from those where you live. If you contact us or use our sites from outside the United States, your information will be processed outside your country, including outside Quebec.

10 Your choices and rights

You can unsubscribe from our newsletter at any time, and change your analytics choice under Cookie settings (see section 6).

Depending on where you live, and on whether the law applies to AAC, you may have the right to:

• ask whether we hold personal information about you, and get access to it or a copy of it;
• ask us to correct it;
• ask us to delete it;
• object to or restrict certain uses of it;
• withdraw consent you have given, without affecting earlier processing; and
• appeal our decision on your request.

To make a request, email [email protected]. We may need to verify your identity before we act on a request. Some rights have legal exceptions, for example where we must keep information. We will not treat you differently for exercising your rights.

If you are in the EEA, the UK or Switzerland

Where the GDPR or a similar law applies to our processing, we rely on these legal bases:

• Consent, for analytics and our newsletter. You can withdraw it at any time.
• Steps you ask us to take, and membership arrangements, for handling applications and running membership.
• Our legitimate interests, for responding to inquiries, running and securing our sites, organising events, using research findings, communicating with stakeholders, and keeping the Committee’s governance transparent as our Bylaws require.
• Legal obligations, where the law requires us to keep or disclose information.

You may also have the right to object to processing based on our legitimate interests, and to data portability. You can complain to your local data protection authority.

11 Security

We take reasonable steps, suited to the information involved, to protect personal information, including encrypted connections to our sites and spam protection on our forms. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure.

12 Children

Our website, blog and activities are intended for adults with a professional or personal interest in online advertising. They are not directed at children.

13 Changes to this notice

We may update this Privacy Notice. We will post the new version on this page with its effective date. Where a change is significant, we will take additional steps to let you know, as appropriate.

14 Contact us

Acceptable Ads Committee, Inc.
228 Park Ave. S., PMB 81712
New York, NY 10003-1502, USA
[email protected]