Privacy, Consent & Cookies
Taking privacy seriously
How we handle privacy, consent and cookies in Ringside.
If you’re more interested in what this means for your marketing data than for your legal team, start with Cookieless Analytics →
Respecting your customers
From the first day our mission was to give the businesses we work with access to the most complete and accurate data possible in order to allow them to make smarter decisions and maximise their marketing efforts.
But we also understood that in doing so we must respect their visitors’ preferences, and take both privacy and consent very seriously.
Our approach to this can be summarised as follows:
1. We cannot identify individuals
We do not capture or store personal information like names, email addresses, personal details, etc.
2. No third party tracking
We do not engage in third party cross-site tracking, or sell or share any data with third parties.
3. Track with consent
We use analytics cookies to track only when permission has been given by the consent management platform setup by the brand.
4. No tracking declined consent
We cannot tie any activity to these users or sessions, or identify them individually.
On privacy
Ringside does not, and has never ingested personally identifiable information in the traditional sense - names, email addresses, personal details, etc. We use pseudonymous (or brand) identifiers to connect pages, events, visits and users.
For example, for some clients we capture the Klaviyo ID, (which is an identifier that Klaviyo has created in its system for a user). Using this ID we can pass information back to the brand, which they can tie back to an individual.
As such, whilst the brands we work with can connect their customers to our data, because we hold no personal information in our systems, we cannot identify individual people. This means we cannot connect users between sites, create any kind of user-map, or engage in cross-site tracking, or broker data. Outside of aggregated industry insights, like conversion rate, or lifetime value, the data we collect is only used by the brand we collect it for.
On tracking
At Ringside we believe that when it comes to tracking, consent should be actively sought, and site visitors’ preferences should be respected – not just because legislation requires it, but because it’s the right thing to do.
As such, if a user declines tracking, we don’t track them.
It’s as simple as that.
If a user has declined tracking, we don’t use session cookies (or other types of technologies), to tie together an individual user’s page views in a single session, or to track their activity across multiple sessions, days, or devices.
If you have any questions about privacy, tracking, consent - or anything else, get in touch.
Our Approach
How we take sensible steps to balance excellent marketing data with user privacy.
We have always been deliberate about the data we collect and how we use it. Unfortunately, not everyone in the industry has taken the same care, leading to misuse, loss of trust, and laws that make people think twice before sharing their information.
Today, brands must walk a fine line: respecting the privacy of their users while still gathering the insight needed to make sound business decisions.
Ringside is designed to help achieve both. We work to honour the privacy choices of users while still equipping brands with accurate, valuable data to guide their strategy.
Here’s what we do based on the user’s choice:
Accepts tracking
We set a functional cookie that records the user’s preference, and a cookie with a pseudonymous identifier to track the user’s activity across the session. Wherever possible, we will stitch this activity together with their previous visits to provide our clients with a single customer view. In addition to this, we use aggregated user data for performance analysis, advanced attribution, forecasting, etc.
However, the user’s activity will not be tracked across any third party websites, and neither will their data be shared with, or sold to any third parties.
Declines tracking
We set a functional cookie that records the user’s preference. We do not assign an identifier to track their activity across the session, instead, effectively we revert to simple counting.
For example, we count page views (i.e. we can report that, in aggregate, a given page was viewed “X” times by users who declined tracking); and we are also able to capture events (i.e. we can report that, in aggregate, “X” sales were generated by users who declined tracking).
This count is never connected to the user. It is impossible for us to know the pages or events we count are connected to a particular user, what that user has done, or where they have been.
Remains undecided
It’s sometimes the case that a user will not interact with a consent banner or pop-up (i.e. they will neither consent to, nor decline tracking cookies). We refer to these users as “undecided”.
Because these individuals have not given their explicit consent, we treat these “undecided” users in the same way as those who actively decline tracking (i.e. we do not assign an identifier, and revert to simple counting).
If, at some point during the session an “undecided” user consents to tracking, we set a functional cookie that records the user’s preference, and an identifier is assigned. The page they are on becomes the first page of the tracked visit, and any subsequent activity across the session is recorded. Any activity prior to them giving consent is “counted” rather than tracked.