Understanding
Online Advertising
Frequently Asked Questions
What Is It?
Interest-based advertising uses information collected across multiple websites to predict your preferences or infer interests and to show you ads that are more likely to be of interest to you. MORE ›
Personally Identifiable Information (PII) includes name, address, telephone number, email address, financial account number, government-issued identifier, and any other data used or intended to be used to identify, contact, or precisely locate a person. The NAI Code provides disincentives to the use of PII for Interest-Based Advertising. As a result, NAI member companies generally use only information that is not PII for Interest Based Advertising and do not merge the non-PII they collect for Interest-Based Advertising with users' PII.
Non-Personally Identifiable Information (Non-PII) is information that is not, on its own, used to identify, contact, or precisely locate a particular individual. Used for Interest-Based Advertising by NAI member companies, this data consists primarily of click-stream information (sites you have visited or links you have clicked) that is tied to a randomly generated anonymous identifier.
As a general rule, Interest-Based Advertising does not depend on information that personally identifies you, such as your name, e-mail address, phone number, photographs, etc. Rather than using personally identifiable information, most Interest-Based Advertising uses random, unique numbers to match your web browser with interest categories. In some cases, personally identifiable information is used to bring interest categories online, but NAI member companies take measures to keep personally identifiable information separate from online browsing activities.