Panelist Privacy Notice

This Notice states that The Nielsen Company has the express consent of each member of your household, including the parent of any minor in your household, to collect and use personal information about you and your household (both adults and children) as described below, unless you contact us to advise us otherwise.
Please be sure each member of your household reads this notice carefully.

Thank you for agreeing to join our select group of panelists. We are a world-leading provider of market research, information and analysis, with a long history of carefully honoring the privacy of panelists.

We assure you that we will never disclose personally identifiable information to our clients. We will NOT use your personally identifiable information to advertise, promote, or market goods or services to you. Our reports and analyses to clients are made on an anonymous basis. Our clients never see any single individual’s personally identifiable information. From time to time we may request that you participate in projects or studies that would involve the disclosure of identifiable data to clients, but we will notify you of that when we request your participation, and we will not release identifiable data to clients unless we specifically advise you otherwise.

How will we use the information you and other panelists provide us? We use this information to perform market research, and to prepare reports and analyses for our clients. This information is never used for direct marketing purposes. We may combine the data you provide us with research tools and information from other sources. Occasionally, we partner with or subcontract with other companies and individuals. Such companies or individuals may have access to personal information about you, but only as needed to perform their functions. Notwithstanding any other provision of this Notice, we also may disclose personal information to third parties when disclosure is required by law, or desirable to permit us to exercise our legal rights or take action regarding illegal activities or to protect the safety of any person. (You may contact us at any time to see details of the parties to whom this information has been made available.) If all or part of our company is sold, merged, or otherwise transferred to another entity, we may transfer personal information as part of that transaction.

What information do we collect? During the initial panel registration process or as part of a research survey, we request certain demographic information about you and others in your household, such as name, address, telephone, e-mail, birth date, gender, occupation, education level, and income. Once your household has voluntarily joined our panel, we will obtain additional information about you and your household because we track a wide variety of information about preference and consumption behaviors and exposure to advertising. For example, depending upon the panels in which your household is included, the information we collect may concern, in addition to everyday personal and household products, video, television (cable, satellite or otherwise), radio, music and reading material preferences and consumption, and location data. If your household participates in a panel that involves healthcare information, we may ask you certain health-related information about you and the members of your household. If your household participates in a panel that involves online or Internet activity information, we may collect ask you information about your activity on your computer and online.

How do we collect personal information? Depending upon the panel, information may be collected manually or automatically, and automatic data collection may not always be obvious to you. For example, some radio and television panels use meters that automatically collect electronic signals from broadcasts, and other panels may involve automatic data collection technologies that are even less obvious, e.g., GPS signals or radio frequency identification tags. By participating on our panel, you specifically authorize us to receive preference and consumption information about you either directly from you or from your household or from outside sources. Outside data sources may include, for example, the providers of the products and services you purchase or use, retail “loyalty” programs, and organizations that collect data online. We may periodically telephone you, and may periodically send you surveys or other correspondence and collect information from you via e-mail if you provide us with your e-mail address.

Do we use cookies?

In order to manage our panel and to enhance your experience as a panelist, we may place cookies on your computer. A cookie is a small amount of data, which often includes an anonymous unique identifier, sent to your browser from a website's computers and stored on your computer’s hard drive. These cookies are not tied to personally identifiable information. On occasion, we may also use cookies to understand your exposure to certain Internet advertisements as you surf the Web. To opt out of sending us this information, please click here.

Please note: if you regularly delete your cookies, you will need to opt-out each time you delete your cookies.

Your participation is always voluntary.  You may contact us if at any time you would like to see the information we hold about you, or to ask us to correct or update this information, or to ask us to delete all personal data that we hold about you, (in which case it may be necessary for us to remove you from the panel) You may contact us at any time to withdraw your consent and stop your participation in our panel.

Personal information security. We may store the personal details we hold about you for as long as needed for the purposes indicated in this policy, which may be indefinitely. We may store this data in your home country, or we may transfer it to other countries. The data protection laws of other countries may differ from those in your home country, but you may be assured that we will handle personal information about you in accordance with this Notice and all applicable laws. This data will be controlled by, and will be accessible electronically only to select staff members. We have in place certain security measures to protect personal data while controlled by us (for example, firewalls), but the storage and communication of personal data cannot always be completely secure.

About The Nielsen Company. The Nielsen Company is the world’s leading marketing information company. Offering services in more than 100 countries, the company provides measurement and analysis of marketplace dynamics and consumer attitudes and behavior.

We may change this Notice. This Notice supersedes and replaces any other statement we may have made to you about our collection and use of personal information. We reserve the right to update and make material changes to this Notice, and to our practices in handling information, including personal information. If we materially change our practices in handling personal information, we will notify you by posting the revised Notice online.