Profile Manager

AdAdvisor, a privacy-focused data service powered by TARGUSinfo, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Neustar, Inc., provides rich demographics-based data to online marketers and websites to help them improve their ability to deliver more relevant and interesting content and advertising to consumers. At the same time, we empower consumers with extremely robust protection through the core concepts of Anonymity, Transparency and Choice. The information on this page will explain how we use data in a privacy-friendly manner and how we give you, the consumer, the ability to control how that data is used.

Anonymity

AdAdvisor uses a cookie to store data and deliver it to our partners. Cookies are small text files associated with your Web browser that enables companies to recognize your computer, and are often used to store preferences and profiles to make your Web experience easier and faster. Our cookie contains four distinct data points that we share with our partners to help them provide you with a better Internet experience: an AdAdvisor code, and three anonymous demographics variables, ZIP code, year of birth, and gender. Here are some important facts to know about our cookie:

Only TARGUSinfo has the ability to access our cookie
The contents are encrypted, so anybody who attempts to read the cookie would only find what appears to be random characters unless they had the encryption key
We do not store, under any circumstances, any data that can be used to identify, locate or contact you, so even when we read our own cookie we have no idea who you are or where you live

Transparency

We have explained how we ensure that the AdAdvisor data is anonymous and that your personally identifiable information is protected. We also feel it is important to share with you what specific data we actually have in our cookie about you. We mentioned that we store an AdAdvisor code, your ZIP code, your year of birth and your gender. An AdAdvisor code is assigned to users based on our own analytics. Our analytics uses a methodology often referred to as .clustering., in which households who share very similar life stage characteristics are placed into clusters and treated as a single group. The idea behind clustering is that all the members of the cluster have basically the same characteristics (such as whether they own or rent, whether there are kids in the house, or whether they live in the suburbs or in a downtown area, etc), therefore members of the cluster tend to have predictably similar interests, habits, lifestyles, and propensities. The AdAdvisor code is simply a numeric representation of the cluster a user's household belongs to.

Choice

NAI

TARGUSinfo is a member of several leading industry organizations dedicated to promoting best practices around the use and protection of consumer information. We are a member of the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI), which provides information and guidance on how its member companies use and protect consumer information. To learn more about other NAI member companies. practices and how you may also opt-out of their services, click the button below.