Personalized and non-personalized ads for LGPD

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

Personalized ads

Personalized 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 they visit or the apps 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 personalized when they are 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-personalized ads (NPA)

Non-personalized ads are ads that are not based on a user’s past behavior. They are targeted using contextual information, including coarse (such as city-level, but not ZIP/postal code) 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-personalized 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-personalized ads to that user, regardless of whether the publisher passes a non-personalized ads signal in the ad tag.

Non-personalized ads for programmatic

When a non-personalized 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 do not use information based on the user’s past behavior.
Google does not record information against user identifiers for the purposes of personalized 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-personalized ads do not support third-party buyers or third-party ad tracking.

Non-personalized ads for non-programmatic

When a non-personalized 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, Authorized Buyers, or AdSense.

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

Non-personalized ads for yield groups

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

Bidding is disabled and no callouts are made to bidders
Mediation for Mobile Apps is not disabled

Common features impacted by non-personalized ads serving

Audience Solutions targeting will not be available for NPA requests
Ad Manager mobile carrier targeting will not be available for NPA requests
Ad Manager bandwidth targeting will not be available for NPA requests
Certain Data Transfer fields, such as UserId, will be unavailable
Deals with non-Display & Video 360 buyers will not 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-personalized ads changes in reporting

For non-personalized ad traffic, certain Ad Manager Data Transfer fields will be blank, including UserId, AudienceSegmentIds, Bandwidth, and MobileCarrier.
Accuracy of Ad Manager Reach Reporting may be impacted.

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