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An Interview with Ben Plomion, VP of Marketing & Partnerships at Chango
Q: Who is Chango and what does your business do?
A: Chango is a Programmatic Marketing Platform (PMP) that allows marketers, agencies and publishers to organize their data and execute highly data-driven marketing campaigns.
Q: How long have you been an NAI Member, and what is the key reason for your membership?
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A: Chango has been an NAI member since 2011.
Like many NAI member companies, Chango is on the front lines of the behavioral advertising’s best practices.
Behaviorally targeted ads deliver greater relevance and a better experience. However, we do recognize that not all consumers want to be served behaviorally targeted ads. We want customers to be notified when data is collected and to understand that they have the ability to opt out. It’s about meaningful choice. As a fast-growing company, however, it’s hard to do all of that on our own. That’s where the NAI comes in.
We have among the most stringent requirements on data partners in the industry. Our NAI membership is part of that. NAI's compliance review helps companies like us adhere to the NAI's Self-Regulatory Code of Conduct. The NAI reviews our data collection practices in great detail. The goal is to ensure that NAI members are complying with industry-wide best practices. It can be a tedious process, but it's worth the investment. It benefits everyone.
Q: Since you work with publishers every single day, we are sure you are asked many questions about your data collection processes. Can you discuss this with our audience?
A: We speak to dozens of publishers every week, and you are right, they care a lot about data. The 5 most common questions on data collection we receive are listed below alongside our responses. We hope the information will be useful to anyone interested in the subject, especially publishers!
1. What data do you collect?
A: As a leader in the Search Retargeting space, Chango helps advertisers find those browsers who have searched for certain relevant keywords, but who have not yet visited the advertiser’s site.
When done correctly, search retargeting is very privacy friendly. At Chango, we do not retain a browser’s full search history, and we do not collect or use any PII, such as name, street address, phone number, or email address. We are only interested in keywords that are relevant to one of our campaigns, so we collect those keywords, such as “minivan” or “hiking boots,” along with some standard information such as IP address, browser type, etc. We never link or merge the data we collect with information that would allow us to link a person with the search data we collect. In fact, that is one of the privacy benefits of this model. No PII is ever needed, used, or retained and we never link our data to a specific individual.
2. How is the data being captured?
A: There are a few ways to collect data. The primary method that we use is to place a JavaScript in the global footer of the publishers' page. Data collection is real-time. Our JavaScript is asynchronous and hosted on Akamai to avoid any page load delay.
The keywords we collect are associated with a non-PII cookie, so the next time that browser comes across one of our exchange partners, we know to show an ad associated with that keyword. Again, no PII or sensitive information is involved in the process. This is what makes our model so privacy friendly; we only have a random cookie ID that is matched to some keywords and standard header data sent by the browser. We don’t know who the browser belongs to, where they may live, or any other information about the consumer.
3. How is the data is being used?
A: We use search data to run search retargeting campaigns. Search Retargeting is a highly effective prospecting tool. Browsers that are actively searching for a keyword in the search engine are expressing a strong intent to buy. We capture search terms and retarget the browser with a display ad across more than 18 ad exchanges.
4. What change needs to be made to my privacy policy?
A: We ask publishers to change their privacy policy in accordance to the NAI’s guidelines – to disclose data collection for behavioral advertising, and to link to an opt out mechanism. It’s important to us that consumers get notice of data collection as well as the option to opt out from behavioral advertising.
Chango reserves the right to terminate the agreement should we deem the data notice or choice options to be insufficient.
5. Is there any other thing I should know about consumer privacy?
A: We provide myriad options for users to opt out. Consumers can opt out of our ads is by clicking on the “”i" icon on any ad that we run. This link takes the consumer to the aboutads page, where they can opt out from behavioral advertising by some or all participating companies. We are also host our opt out on the opt-out page, which consumers can access directly or through links in our partners’ privacy policies. Consumers can also opt out from our website.
