Understanding
Online Advertising

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.

While it is possible to use personally identifiable information for Interest-Based Advertising, NAI member companies primarily use only non-personally identifiable information. The NAI Code would require member companies to provide notice and to obtain consent prior to using personally identifiable information for Interest-Based Advertising. Interest-Based Advertising does not depend on information that may be personally identifiable to you, such as your name, e-mail address, your phone number, photographs, etc. Rather than using personally identifiable information, most Interest-Based Advertising uses random, unique numbers stored in cookies for associating specific browsers, computers, or devices with interest-based profiles.