5. Communications and marketing
5.1 We may contact you by post and telephone, and, where you have provided consent, by e-mail, to let you know about our events and activities (and we may also mention those of third parties, particularly where they are collaborating with us or sponsoring our events) that might be of particular interest to you; retail offers and promotions, or about the work of Kew more generally; and to request donations and provide you with information about and the opportunity to participate in our fundraising activities. In the case of venue hire or group bookings, we may also contact you by post, phone or email to tell you about associated events which support or relate to your venue hire or group booking. We provide the opportunity for you to opt-out from receiving our marketing communications every time we contact you.
You can opt-out from receiving our marketing communications, or update your contact preferences at any time by emailing:
privacy@kew.org
5.2 Digital advertising targeting
We may reach out to users across the internet with adverts for things we think you might be interested in using a variety of digital advertising providers. These could be social media providers like Facebook and Instagram, search engines like Google and Bing, display and programmatic advertisers like Avocet and MIQ or through our email marketing if you’ve opted in to receive marketing emails from us. Please note this list isn’t exhaustive. The following sets out what activities we undertake and some we don’t, many of which are based on cookies and / or pixels.
A cookie is a simple text file that is stored on your computer or mobile device by a website’s server. Each cookie is unique to your web browser. It will contain some anonymous information such as a unique identifier and the site name and some digits and numbers. It allows a website to remember things like your preferences or what’s in your shopping basket.
A pixel is a snippet of code that enable cookies to be downloaded to your device. Pixel tags are usually third party tags which identify a device as it browses different websites, partly so that targeted advertising can be shown to the user of that device.
You can find out more information about cookies and pixels on
the Information Commissioner’s Officer (ICO) website
.
5.2.1 Interest and behaviour based advertising
We will use certain targeting options provided by the digital advertising providers based on the data they already hold to reach out to users of their platform. You would see an advert from us only because you fall into a particular demographic, location, interest or behavioural group , not because we have specifically targeted you as an individual.
To do this we have told the digital advertising provider what type of people we would like to see our ads (for example anyone over the age of 16 who has demonstrated an interest in plants). They have then identified you based on the data they hold on users of their platform. We never see any of your data and are not able to identify any individuals who may then see these adverts..
5.2.2 Cookie and pixel based remarketing
Third party digital advertising providers may place cookies and pixels on our website where we allow them to. When you visit our website and accept targeting cookies, these targeting cookies will be placed on your device. Each time you interact with our website it will send usage data about the fact that your device has been used to access our website back to the digital advertising provider. We tell the digital advertising provider which type of users should be shown a Kew advert, for example “any device which has visited a Kew event page”. The digital advertising provider will then assess their usage data and send an advert to those users who visited the event page. We never see any of your data and are not able to identify any individuals who may see our adverts.
You can see how else the digital advertising providers may use this data and find out how you can control how they use your data in the digital advertising providers’ privacy policies and terms and conditions. You can see all the remarketing cookies and pixels that we use on the Kew website and find out more about managing third party cookies in our
Cookie Policy
.
5.2.3 Lookalike audience targeting
We may work with digital advertising providers to identify and advertise to individuals who share a similar interest, characteristic or behaviour to users who have already engaged with Kew’s content, adverts and/or website. We do this to increase the number of individuals who visit our sites and products by providing digital advertising providers with set criteria of behaviour people may have taken that shows interest in what we’re promoting, for example “people similar to those who have already visited a Kew event page”. They use this criteria to identify a new audience by reviewing who has already engaged with Kew’s content, adverts and/or website and identifying users with similar characteristics. Data which is identified in this way is called a lookalike audience. If a lookalike audience is used, we will never see any data of individuals and will never be able to identify individuals who may see our adverts.
5.2.4 Custom audience targeting
Kew does not undertake any custom audience targeting with digital advertising providers or use custom audiences to create lookalike audiences. We do not share your personal data with any digital advertising providers and this will never be the reason you see an advert from us. But for thoroughness we are including an explanation of what this activity involves.
Custom audience targeting involves the disclosure of personal data to a digital advertising provider (as opposed to the use of cookies or pixels to identify a device). Digital advertising providers enable advertisers to share certain customer personal data with them, usually email addresses or phone numbers. The digital advertising provider then matches the customer personal data to the personal data they already hold on their own users. The digital advertising provider then send adverts to those individuals who are both customers of the advertiser and users of the digital advertising provider.
The digital advertising provider may also use this personal data to identify a “lookalike audience” of similar users who have similar characteristics to those within the custom audience.
5.2.4 Opting out of advertising from Kew
There are several ways to minimise the amount of advertising you see on the internet and to opt out of any targeted advertising from Kew. Please visit our
Cookies policy
for more information about how to update your cookies opt in on our website and how to update your settings with the digital advertising providers.