Data Collection
How we use the collected information
Collected information and the associated device-ids may be used by AudienceProject for different purposes in order to serve our clients. The scope of our contract with the individual clients dictates which of the following services data may be used for.
Market- and Media Research
AudienceProject is a market research company, and the collected information is used for Market- and Media Research purposes.
AudienceProject provides information on websites and website-evaluations to clients around the world. Specifically, when a visitor to any given website with the AudienceProject service in operation completes the survey, the data feeds into an online report accessible by the website-owner. This report provides information on the quality and usage of the site. Only fully anonymized data is accessible to the web site owner.
Additionally, the data that you supply about any given website are used, in aggregated form, for creating benchmarks with which to compare other participating (in order to rank websites according to usability-performance).
The data is also used to provide our clients with a comprehensive profile of visitors to a given media or application. The visitor profile allows our clients to identify which content is popular in specific demographic or interest defined target groups.
When completing the survey each respondent will be invited to participate in an opinions-panel where, from time to time, members will be invited to participate in surveys about what movies they like to see, attitudes toward the global financial crisis or their feelings toward immigration issues. They may also be asked to share their opinion in news-polls about a wide range of the most important current affairs. The topic of the specific polls are decided by our clients.
The opinions-panels can be operated by subsidiaries of AudienceProject or panels operated by third parties. In case the panel is operated by a subsidiary of AudienceProject, the background data are used to target surveys to specific age-groups, or the like.
Audience Validation
Furthermore we use device-ids to collect data about which content is accessed on the Internet and in applications. Banner ad campaigns, text ad campaigns and more. By registering which device id’s are exposed to certain advertisement campaigns we are able to validate and audit the effect of online campaigns in terms of reaching specific desired target-groups. These reports are usually used to plan, optimize and document the effect of online advertising campaigns.
Viewability
We also provide our clients with estimates on the viewability of online content and online advertisement. A large share of online advertisement is loaded but never actually seen by anyone due to users not scrolling through all pages on a website. We measure and report the viewable share of specific online content to help our clients make better decisions about matching the right content to the right user.
Fraud detection
We help our clients detect fraud on their websites and campaigns. Ad fraud is a type of scam in which the perpetrator fools advertisers into paying for something that is worthless to them, such as fake traffic, clicks or fake leads generated by online robots instead of real humans. The Association of National Advertisers’ (ANA) latest Bot Baseline report estimates that advertising fraud will cost companies an estimated $6.5 billion globally this year.
Web analytics
Web analytics is the collection, reporting, and analysis of website and application data for the purposes of understanding and optimising website and application usage.
Analytics platforms measure activity and behaviour on a website or an application, for example: how many users visit, how long they stay, how many pages they visit, which pages they visit, and whether they arrive by following a link or not? Businesses use web analytics platforms to measure and benchmark site performance and to look at key performance indicators that drive their business, such as purchase conversion rate.
Why Web Analytics Are Important? Website analytics provide insights and data that can be used to create a better user experience for website visitors.
True Frequency
More and more people are using more and more devices to access the internet. While most web analytics solutions measures the number of devices (laptops, smartphones, tablets etc) that have interacted with a particular website or application, we try to help our clients to convert that number into real humans in order to get a more accurate reader-ship count. If our clients have measured 200.000 devices visiting their website? They need to know if it was 100.000 persons accessing their website from both smartphones and laptops? Or 200.000 persons accessing the website? These metrics helps medias and advertisers to understand their true readership numbers.
AI Model-training and validation
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning models are increasingly being used to optimize the user experience of both applications and websites.
We help our clients to improve their AI models by providing them with both training and validation datasets.
- A training dataset is a dataset of examples used for learning the ai model desired behaviour.
- A validation dataset is a set of examples used to validate the precision and accuracy of the ai model once it has been created.
Aggregated and anonymized information
If information is aggregated or de-identified so it is no longer reasonably associated with an identified or identifiable natural person, AudienceProject may use it for any business purpose.
What information we collect?
AudienceProject collect and store different types of data depending on which product or service you interact with. Our clients can utilize AudienceProject services to gather information in three different ways:
- Active User Data collection
- Passive User Data collection
- Third party provided data
We will walk through the different services and information being collected:
Active User Data collection
Surveys. AudienceProject collects and stores the data from answers to the questionnaire of every person who participates in a survey. This information cannot, in and of itself, be used to identify individual respondents by name and/or address, but it can be linked to specific browsers or applications (the device from which the survey is completed) by using cookies, local storage or mobile advertiser ids.
Feedback forum. AudienceProject collects and stores the data from comments and ideas provided by every person who decides to use the feedback forum. This information provided in the feedback forum can be used to identify individual users by the provided name and/or e-mail address. And it can be linked to specific browsers or applications (the device from which the feedback is given) by using cookies, local storage or mobile advertiser ids.
Newsletter signups. AudienceProject assist our clients in generating newsletter signups. If you chose to sign up to a newsletter through a AudienceProject hosted survey, we will (with your permission) provide the client with you e-mail address, gender, age and zip-code.
Passive User Data collection
We collect different types of statistics passively:
- we collect information about which online content you visit.
- we collect information about which online content appears in-view.
- we collect and store information about the time spend consuming different types of online content.
This information cannot, in and of itself, be used to identify individual respondents by name and/or address, but it can be linked to specific browsers or applications (the device from which the survey is completed) by using anonymised ids stored in cookies, local storage or through the use of mobile advertiser ids.
How we collect information?
Information is collected through the use of surveys, our feedback forum, cookies and identifiers (device identification id), javascript, images and pixel tags.
Each of the above generates log files, which contains date/time stamps, IP addresses, device type, browser type, operating system, ISP referring/exit pages, Device identification ID and/or advertising ID, local shared objects and event/clickstream data.
Active user data collection collects data through questionnaires and surveys that can be distributed through websites, apps or email (if a permission exists).
The information collected through our services is furthermore enriched in order to generate additional meta-data which contains GeoIP, Human Robot prob, Human Frequency, Household Frequency
Information type definitions:
- Internet Protocol (“IP”) address, which is a unique string of numbers automatically assigned to your device whenever you access the Internet
- Tracking scripts which are electronic files that allow a website to count users who have visited that page or to access certain cookies
- Tracking Pixels, also known as clear GIFs, beacons, spotlight tags , are a method for passing information from the user’s computer to a third party website
- Local Shared Objects, such as Flash cookies, and Local Storage, such as HTML5
- Device identification (“ID”), which is a distinctive number associated with a smartphone or similar handheld device, but is different than a hardware serial number
- Advertising ID, which is a unique, user-resettable identification number for advertising associated with a device (e.g. iOS uses the Identifier for Advertising (or “IDFA”) and Android uses Google Advertising ID)
- GeoIP, Approximate physical location (for example, at the country, city or zip code level) of a user’s computer or device derived from the IP address of such computer or device;
- HumanRobot, a probabilistic classification of the probability of a website visitor to be a real human versus a script/online robot created with the sole purpose of creating false traffic.
- Human Freq, the number of times a person visited a piece of online content. Most web analytics solutions only report device frequency. We estimate the human frequency.
- Household Freq, the number of times a person from the same household visited a piece of online content. Most web analytics solutions only report device frequency. We estimate the household frequency.
Why we use cookies and mobile advertiser ids?
A cookie is a small text file that is sent to your computer via your web browser when you visit some websites. Think of a cookie as an ID-card that is unique for any given browser. The job of the cookie is to notify the website when you return to it. Usually, the purpose is to allow the website to remember something about your device at a later time.
Cookies should not be confused with viruses or programs that can be executed on your computer. Cookies are by themselves not malicious. They are just text-files that allow a website to store a limited amount of text.
Most Websites use cookies. Cookies can tell the website how often you visit specific web-pages, which in turn helps newspapers, etc. to determine what kind of information you find interesting.
Cookies are also used in many online shopping systems to keep track of the items you have put in the virtual shopping cart.
The number of times you visited a website
Also, have you ever wondered how YouTube can remember the volume-setting on the video-player every time you return to watch more videos? Cookies are doing the magic.
Have you ever been offered the option to have a website remember your username and maybe also your password, so that you don’t have to login every time you return? Again, the answer is cookies.
Cookies and device ids allows us to tie information to a specific device. Without cookies or mobile advertiser id’s, the online shopping system could not decide which item was put in which shopping basket? If 20 page views was generated by 20 devices or one device? If the volume setting on the video should be muted for one device or for all devices?
AudienceProject use several types of cookies depending on the device and operating system in question, since different systems require different types of cookies.
We have had complaints in the past about survey-invitations that keep popping up even after users had opted not to participate in the survey. In most cases the problem was related to software that kept wiping the browser cookies off the user’s computer. Without the cookie – we cannot register rejections or users that already have participated. To handle this problem, we are also using local storage which allows us to maintain your quarantine status. When you decide not to participate in a survey – we want to respect that wish.
Mobile devices like smartphones and tables will usually use either browser cookies, local storage or mobile advertiser id, while desktop computer often use browser cookies and/or local storage for storing user-ids.
Which domains are used for cookies?
Userreport.com and associated sub-domains like tag.userreport.com, *.userreport.com or ics.userreport.com