OKO Digital

The ad optimisation people

  • Home
  • Publisher Solutions
    • Website Monetization
    • Header Bidding
    • AdX – Google Ad Exchange
    • App Ad Monetization
    • WordPress Monetization
  • About us
    • OKO & the OKO team
    • Careers
  • Blog
    • Latest blog posts
    • Ad Blocking
    • Ad Exchange (AdX)
    • Ad Optimisation
    • Ad Performance & Page Speed
    • Ad Publishing Landscape
    • AdSense
    • DoubleClick For Publishers (DFP)
    • Exchange Bidding
    • Google Ad Manager
    • Google Certified Publishing Partners
    • Header Bidding
    • Privacy & GDPR
    • Program Policy
    • Open Bidding
    • Traffic
  • Contact

Privacy and GDPR, Program Policy . 5th March 2015

What does AdSense consider PII anyway?

Google’s Publisher Policy Team, based out of Mountainview, have been busy emailing out their sincerest apologies to publishers to recently received erroneous communications about breaches to the AdSense PII policy.   Whilst the original emails were sent in error, they’ve been an eye opener to many publishers who were not previously aware of the policies around PII.

What happened?

A large number of publishers received an email saying that a policy issue relating to PII had now been resolved despite never having received notification or an issue (and it not appearing in their AdSense dashboards). Realising their error, the Google Publisher Policy Team sent out an email apologising for the wrongly sent emails.  Crucially though this was sent to large numbers of publishers who didn’t receive the original erroneous email.   Despite all the confusion this is an issue that publishers should be aware of.

PII – Personally Identifiable Information

Google’s AdSense Programme policies page defines personally identifiable information as information that “Google could use or recognise as personally-identifiable information” or “permanently identifies a particular device”.  That can mean anything from names to email addresses, phone numbers or the serial numbers of a mobile device.

You shall not pass!

When it comes to passing information to AdSense, DFP or AdX there are limited ways that this can be done.  The most common is through the URL that is requesting the ad impression.   If you put PII into URLs this isn’t a good thing for a number of reasons that go way beyond Ad Serving.  It will though pass that PII into the ad system.

Other ways this can happen would usually be more deliberate such as using custom targeting criteria in DFP to pass the values.

Why is this an issue?

Google loves to build up information on its users, but it does so within the bounds of its privacy policy. Information passed into the ad system through the means described above would become available to advertisers and those operating on the buy-side of the ad system.  Once in the wild it would not be protected by the privacy policies in place at Google.

False positives and confusion

The recent erroneous warning will not help with a topic that already causes confusion.  If a warning appears in your dashboard or you receive a policy warning about PII this should not be ignored as it is considered a serious issue by Google.

Publishers who have genuine warnings around this issue are often surprised and confused at how they might be passing personally identifiable information.  Below are some ways we have seen publishers get caught out with this issue.

  • Member profile pages that use PII in URLs
  • Passing emails as custom targeting criteria in order to target users through DFP
  • Not sanitising URLs on user generated content, such as forum posts
  • Passing form variables using the GET method

There are some more examples in this policy video from Google:

If you are confused by Google AdSense programme policies and could benefit from a more supportive kind or support, why not talk to OKO?  We work with publishers to help them grow their business is safe, sustainable ways.

Privacy and GDPR, Program Policy . Tips

About Abbey Colville

SEARCH

TOPICS

  • Ad Blocking
  • Ad Exchange (AdX)
  • Ad Optimisation
  • Ad Performance & Page Speed
  • Ad Publishing Landscape
  • AdSense
  • DoubleClick For Publishers (DFP)
  • Exchange Bidding
  • Google Ad Manager
  • Google Certified Publishing Partners
  • Header Bidding
  • Open Bidding
  • Privacy & GDPR
  • Program Policy
  • Traffic

Could the ads on your site be earning more?

Find out how OKO help publishers earn more from their ads.

LEARN MORE
Insticator

OKO Digital, The Cake Shed, Manor Farm, Manor Road, Hayling Island, Hampshire, PO11 0QW

Google Certified Publisher Partner Logo

OKO is a registered trademark and trading style of OKO Digital Limited. Registered in England company number 03867231. © OKO Digital Limited 1996-2018. All Rights Reserved.

  • Privacy Policy
  • Cookie Policy
Manage Cookie Consent
We use cookies to optimise our website and our service.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}