Welcome! This is where you can learn about Criteo, the technologies and services we offer to our partners, and our data collection and privacy policies.
Our activity
Criteo helps brands, e-commerce sites and other advertisers (“Advertisers”) promote their products and services. We do that by enabling Advertisers to tailor their campaigns and/or offers to audiences that they want to reach with content that they wish to promote, which in turns means that you may receive advertising that may be of interest to you on the websites, mobile applications and other platforms of our partners (the “Publishers” or “Partners”).
How do our services work?
Criteo does not use any data that allows us to identify you directly, such as your first and last name, postal address, email address in plain text, etc.
When you browse an Advertiser’s website or mobile application that uses our technologies, that technology allows us to collect a limited amount of data relating to your browsing, such as the products you have viewed, put in your shopping cart and purchased. Find out more about the type of data collected by Criteo. This navigation data is linked to a unique identifier, namely an identification cookie or any other similar technology (such as mobile advertising identifiers and non-cookie technologies) depending on your navigation environment.
When you browse a Publisher’s website or mobile application that also uses our technologies, the Publisher notifies us, either directly or through an advertiser exchange, that an advertising space is available to offer you personalized advertising. The Criteo technology, working with our Advertisers, then may decide to purchase that advertising space.
The advertising you see from our partners when using our technology is based on our recommendation algorithms.
Practical example
Here is one way our technology allows us to provide you with ads that may be of interest to you:
When users visit an Advertiser website using our technologies, data relating to their browsing events are collected.
Example of data collected by Criteo:
- The user with the cookie identifier 123f94d8-a745-4f8b-a1d0-bf6fbbd60058 (let’s name it “Criteo ID 123” for convenience) viewed product A on 01/01/2018 at 13:37 while browsing www.example-advertiser.com.
Our technologies compare these data with the aggregated data available on the Advertiser’s website.
Example of aggregated data available:
- In general, users who purchased Product A on www.example-advertiser.com also purchased Product B on this website
- In general, Product C is popular on this website
When users browse a Publisher website, we are informed of the availability of advertising spaces.
Example of data collected by Criteo:
- An advertising space with the following characteristics (size, visibility, etc.) is available on www.example-publisher.com that the Criteo ID 123 is about to browse
Then our algorithms determine the relevance for buying the advertising space and displaying a personalized ad on it.
Example of decision that would be taken by Criteo: Buy the advertising space available on www.example-publisher.com and display an ad featuring the following products:
- Product A, because the user with the Criteo ID 123 showed interest in it during a recent session
- Product B, because the user with the Criteo ID 123 is likely to be interested in this product since he/she has viewed product A during a recent session
- Product C, because this product is popular.
If you disable Criteo services, we will not display any personalized ads to you. On the other hand, the advertising space may be purchased by another company to display personalized or non-personalized ads. If you want to disable Criteo services,
click here.
Please note that the use of our technologies on our partners’ websites and mobile applications is governed by their privacy policies, which can be accessed directly from their websites and/or mobile applications. We require them to provide you with complete and appropriate information and, to the extent required by law, to obtain your consent before any of your personal information is available to us.
Our technologies are able to work in a similar fashion:
- on a webpage by relying on cookies, which are supported by most web browsers;
- on a mobile application by relying on the mobile advertising ID provided by mobile operating system vendors (e. g. Google and Apple);
- on an browser which default settings limit the use of third-party cookies and inter-site tracking, such as Safari, if you provide consent for our services to co-exist with these default settings;
- and in a transversal way between the different environments listed above. Find out more about how our services work from one environment to another (“cross-device linking”).
In order to provide you with ads that are better tailored to your interests, we may receive and process audience and segments information derived from the data you accepted to share with trusted third party partners. These partners may send us information regarding your shopping habits (e.g. interested in clothing, furniture or electronics), the points of interest that are near you based on non-precise geolocation information (e.g. stores that are geographically close to you) or the products you have been purchasing in a brick and mortar store of the advertisers that are using our services to manage their online marketing campaigns. In such case, Criteo will only process geolocation information and identifiers (such as cookie IDs and Mobile Advertising IDs) that do not allow us to know who you are.
We believe that the personalization of ads is beneficial to you and the Internet ecosystem in that it contributes to the promotion of a free and open Internet by allowing Publishers to monetize the content they create, while allowing you to benefit from ads that may be more interesting to you than non-personalized ads that would be displayed to you.
Our privacy pillars
We have developed our services and technologies taking great care to respect your privacy.
Data minimisation
We undertake never to use any data that allows us to identify you directly, such as your first and last name, postal address, email address in plain text, etc. Without ever being able to identify you personally, our technologies are able to recognize your devices and/or browsers on the basis of an identifier consisting of a series of characters (identifier contained in a cookie or other). However, these data are qualified as personal data by European regulations and personal information by Californian law. As such, they are the subject of our greatest vigilance in terms of security and respect for your privacy.
Privacy by design
Our product teams develop every feature with privacy in mind; it’s the cornerstone of Privacy by Design, Criteo’s long-standing practice and commitment to ensuring industry-leading privacy, security and safety for consumers and marketers.
Key elements include:
- As required by the GDPR, we have had a designated Data Privacy Officer since 2013 along with a team of privacy experts.
- These experts sit within the Product and R&D organization. They perform ongoing Privacy Impact Assessments to monitor potential risks during the product lifecycle and proactively mitigate those risks.
- The Data Privacy team delivers company-wide privacy training, enforces codes of conduct, and is integral to ensuring that we build best-in-class products and services.
- We regularly review and document our internal policies, amend existing privacy policies as necessary, and enforce these policies with our partners and vendors.
Criteo's commitments
Our ads do not require:
- To collect data that allows us to identify you directly, such as your first and last name, your postal address, or your email address in plain text.
- To collect sensitive information (such as religion, political opinion, health or sexual orientation …) to create segments or target ads to users. For the sole purpose of serving ads on a Publisher’s properties that could possibly reveal sensitive information (eg. a medical website), we may collect the URL of the website or the name of the mobile application.
- To collect irrevocable identifiers, such as the hardware identifiers of the devices you use (UDID or MAC address, etc.).
- To collect data related to your precise geolocation in real time.
Criteo supports industry initiatives for greater transparency in personalized advertising
Criteo imposes a high level of requirements on its partners
We contractually require that the Advertisers and Publishers with whom we work to comply with the Criteo Advertising Guidelines and Supply Partner Guidelines, as well as with the various regulations applicable to the protection of personal data, and in particular the GDPR.
By using the Criteo Services, they undertake, where the applicable regulations require it:
- to include on their websites and mobile applications the appropriate notice and information, allowing users to know more about our services and to object to them through this notice; and
- to collect the consent of users prior to the placement of cookies or any similar technology for the purpose of displaying personalized advertisements.
In order to help our partners meet their legal and contractual obligations, we regularly share industry best practices with them.
Google’s Privacy Sandbox
We participate in testing the Google Privacy Sandbox, a set of technologies to enable digital advertising without using third-party cookies in Google Chrome. With your consent, and as part of the testing, Criteo may store and access data on your device or browser, including by setting new cookies, that relates to your web browsing interests and to ad measurement. In accordance with applicable data protection laws, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time on this page. For more information about the Google Privacy Sandbox please see https://privacysandbox.com/.
Your data, your choice
Understand my rights in relation to my personal data.
Learn more about how we use your data.
Disable Criteo services.
Contact us.
Changes to our privacy policy
Please note that we may update or change this privacy policy. If we revise our privacy policy, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, and to other places we deem appropriate, so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any we disclose it. If we make any material changes we will notify you by means of a notice on this site prior to the change becoming effective.
Last updated : 11/03/2022
