Personalised and non-personalised ads for LGPD

This article details the differences between personalised and non-personalised ads as they relate to the Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados (LGPD). Learn more about the LGPD privacy legislation

Personalised ads

Personalised advertising (formerly known as interest-based advertising) is a powerful tool that improves advertising relevance for users and increases ROI for advertisers. In all our publisher products, we make inferences about a user’s interests based on the sites that they visit or the apps that they use. This allows advertisers to target their campaigns according to these interests, providing an improved experience for users and advertisers alike.

Google considers ads to be personalised when they're based on previously collected or historical data to determine or influence ad selection, including a user's previous search queries, activity, visits to sites or apps, demographic information or location. Specifically, this would include, for example, demographic targeting, interest category targeting, remarketing, targeting Customer Match lists and targeting audience lists uploaded in Display & Video 360 or Campaign Manager 360.

Non-personalised ads (NPA)

Non-personalised ads are ads that aren't based on a user’s past behaviour. They're targeted using contextual information, including coarse (such as city-level, but not ZIP/postcode) geo-targeting based on current location, and content on the current site or app or current query terms. Google disallows all interest-based audience targeting, including demographic targeting and user list targeting.

Although non-personalised ads don’t use cookies or mobile ad identifiers for ad targeting, they do still use cookies or mobile ad identifiers for frequency capping, aggregated ad reporting and to combat fraud and abuse.

When a signed-in Google user in Brazil has directly provided Google with age information that indicates they are a child, Google will only serve non-personalised ads to that user, regardless of whether the publisher passes a non-personalised ads signal in the ad tag.

Non-personalised ads for programmatic

When a non-personalised ads signal is passed in the tag, the following happens for programmatic transactions:

"Programmatic transactions" are transactions from Open Auctions, Private Auctions, First Look, Preferred Deals and Programmatic Guaranteed.

• Ads that serve don't use information based on the user’s past behaviour.
• Google doesn't record information against user identifiers for the purposes of personalised ads measurement or targeting.
• No ads serve using interest-based audience targeting (including demographic targeting and remarketing list targeting).
• Ads served via GDN and Display & Video 360 will only use contextual and placement targeting. These ads may use IP address for very coarse level geo-targeting (city-level) and to prevent invalid activity. These ads also use cookies and/or IDFA and AdIDs for frequency capping, aggregated ad reporting and to combat fraud and abuse.
• Non-personalised ads don't support third-party buyers or third-party ad tracking.

Non-personalised ads for non-programmatic

When a non-personalised ads signal is passed in the tag, the following happens for non-programmatic line items:

"Non-programmatic line items" are line items that aren't a part of Programmatic Guaranteed or Programmatic Deals in Ad Manager, Ad Exchange or AdSense.

• No ads serve using interest-based audience targeting (including demographic targeting and remarketing list targeting)
• Google doesn't record information against user identifiers for the purposes of personalised ads measurement or targeting.
• Non-personalised ads will only serve for reservations if there are no ad technology providers declared or detected.

Non-personalised ads for yield groups

When a non-personalised ads signal is passed in the tag, the following happens for yield groups using Open Bidding and mediation for mobile apps:

• Open Bidding is disabled and no callouts are made to Open Bidders
• Mediation for Mobile Apps isn't disabled

Common features impacted by non-personalised ads serving

• Audience Solutions targeting won't be available for NPA requests
• Ad Manager mobile operator targeting won't be available for NPA requests
• Ad Manager bandwidth targeting won't be available for NPA requests
• Certain Data Transfer fields, such as UserID, will be unavailable
• Deals with non-Display & Video 360 buyers won't be able to transact for NPA requests
• Deals with Display & Video 360 buyers may be impacted if they use third-party pixels or audience targeting for NPA requests

Non-personalised ads changes in reporting

• For non-personalised ad traffic, certain Ad Manager Data Transfer fields will be blank, including UserID, AudienceSegmentIDs, Bandwidth and MobileOperator.
• Accuracy of Ad Manager Reach Reporting may be impacted.