The Yahoo! Privacy team sometimes receives the question of how long we retain a web browser’s ad interests. The answer is a bit complicated but I’d like to take a moment to review the life of an ad interest and how for the most part that life is a fairly short one – typically less than a few weeks.

Before an ad interest can be determined, a category must first be created. Yahoo! has nearly 400 standard interest categories in the US (these can viewed from Ad Interest Manager). Categories fall across a range of topics such as iPods, Ford Trucks, Kitchen Remodeling or European Travel interests. Once a category is created, the next step is scoring interest in that category.

The birth of an ad interest begins when an interest scoring rule is triggered in our backend ad interest systems. Only a few key events are reviewed for scoring today: searches, page view, ad views, and ad clicks. Note – our new mail system processes email keywords similarly to “searches”. These events are funneled to a special set of servers at Yahoo! which score each event for interest in a category. Each category may give different scores to different events. For example, for an interest in Gifting Flowers the system will typically weight a search higher than a page view, whereas the Truck interest category may score a visit to the Yahoo! Autos site higher than a generic “truck” search. The resulting event score is then added to the existing score for an ad interest in relationship to an anonymous browser cookie.

Once an event has been scored for an ad interest it is held in these systems for a short period of time just in case something fails and data needs to be reprocessed. After a few days the raw event information is purged from these systems and only the resulting scores remain. It’s important to note that when a user opts-out of receiving interest-based ads, their activity is no longer sent to our backend ad interest systems for scoring (this includes from the new Yahoo! Mail platform) AND ads are no longer selected for that user based on interests.

Now that we have a score for an ad interest, the question of its life span can be addressed. Ad interest scores at Yahoo! “decay” – meaning that each day that goes by, each ad interest category will slowly reduce its score for a browser cookie. Each ad interest category has a different decay rate – tied to how long it typically takes to make a purchase decision. For example, an interest in Gifting Flowers may live a very short period of time – less than a week. Whereas an interest in Trucks lasts longer. While most ad interest categories will decay out scores within a few weeks, the maximum decay is about 90 days.

Interest scoring and decaying are always occurring at the same time. On some days activities may increase the score in a particular ad interest category while other interests are decaying because no activity occurs in relationship to them. If a browser cookie event isn’t processed through our backend systems for 90 days, all ad interests for that browser cookie will decay out.

That’s it! In quick review, the steps are: ad interest category creation, select event scoring, raw data purging, and category interest decay.

To learn more about other forms of log data retention at Yahoo!, please read this blog article.

To learn more about interest based advertising at Yahoo!, view what we believe your ad interests are, and see other general ad interest related information, please visit http://privacy.yahoo.com/aim .

Shane Wiley
VP, Privacy & Data Governance
Yahoo!

Today, Yahoo! is making an announcement of our intention to change our log file data retention policy to meet the needs of our consumers for personalization and relevance, while living up to their expectations of trust.  Over the last 3 years, the way we and other companies offer services online and the way consumers experience the Internet has changed dramatically.  So, we will keep our log file data longer than we have been – offering consumers a more robust individualized experience – while we continue our innovation in the areas of transparency and choice to protect privacy.  We believe it’s a move forward for Yahoo! and our users.

In late 2008, after a careful review of our data systems and needs and after a great deal of discussion among policymakers about how long search companies should hold search log file data, Yahoo! announced a log file data retention policy that set us apart from the rest of our industry. We worked to minimize our log file retention to 90-days for most log file data, noting certain exceptions where we hold raw data for up to 6 months for fraud and security purposes and as long as necessary to meet our legal obligations. Our goal with this log file data retention policy was to continue to offer best-in-class, competitive products while striving to minimize how much raw data we held.

Today our goals remain the same – keep data as long as we need to and meet our consumers’ expectations on trust. While these things are fundamental to us, over the past several years it’s clear that the Internet has changed, our business has changed, and the competitive landscape has changed.  We have been reevaluating our log file data retention policy in light of these changes and as a result of this review we are moving to align our log file data retention policy closer to the competitive norm across the industry.  That means that after this new policy goes into effect, we will no longer apply the 90-day retention policy to raw search logs or other log file data.  We will hold raw search log files for 18 months and we will be closely examining what the right policy and time frame should be for other log file data.  In announcing this change, we have gone back to the drawing board to ensure that our policies will support the innovative products we want to deliver for our consumers.

Yahoo! has not been standing still on privacy. Over the past 3 years we have focused enormous resources on front-end transparency and meaningful choice for consumers. This is evidenced by our Ad Interest Manager tool and our commitment to CLEAR Ad Notice – privacy icons delivered with ads all across the Yahoo! network to give users control over customized advertising. We are continuing to improve these tools, are active in discussions on how to integrate browser-based Do-Not-Track tools into existing privacy models, and are working on even more consumer tools within Yahoo! products designed to put more control our users’ hands.  Privacy has always been a core value of this company.

Transparency with our users is the foundation of what builds trust. That’s why we are telling our users about these changes now, well ahead of when they go into effect. In the next 4-6 weeks we will begin rolling out notifications across Yahoo! to ensure that we have given clear and understandable notice to our consumers of this change in our policy.  Thirty days after we have completed these notifications, we will put the new policy into effect.  We expect this will occur sometime in mid-to-late July.

No policy exists in a vacuum and every company has to continually reevaluate what serves its consumers best over time. Changes like these are never undertaken lightly. We at Yahoo! are incredibly proud of the innovative new products we have launched and have lined up in the coming months for our users around the globe. We have a world-class research team using data to improve consumer experiences. We have a product team dedicated to innovative new products and features like Search Direct and Livestand.  And we remain one of the most visited and trusted sites in the world. We want to stay that way by putting our users’ data to work for them to make every visit to Yahoo! better than the last.

Anne Toth
Chief Trust Officer

en Español
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Yahoo!  submitted a discussion proposal today to the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) to consider  one possible approach to combining the CLEAR Ad Notice program supported by the nearly 6,000 members of the Digital Advertising Initiative with the newly released Do Not Track features in web browsers.

Industry’s efforts to deploy the Advertising Option Icon have gained significant momentum.  Yahoo! has surpassed 1.5 TRILLION impressions of the icon ourselves and has recently expanded coverage to the EU.  Google recently announced upcoming icon coverage for all of AdSense ads being served on hundreds of thousands websites.   Most major web browsers recently released features that align with calls for a “Do Not Track” solution to online behavioral advertising – although each company has taken a different approach to tackle the challenge.  Yahoo!’s  goal is to try to find a way to combine the best of the new browser-based approaches with the existing Advertising Option Icon developed with the cooperation of thousands of companies participating in the Digital Advertising Alliance.

While competition between companies over privacy practices can drive positive developments for consumers, in this case a better outcome for consumers is to converge on a single approach to exercise control over online behavioral advertising.  A single approach can reduce consumer confusion and better align the user experience with the consistency of the CLEAR Ad Notice program managed by the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA).  Therefore, we propose that web browser developers align behind a single Do Not Track approach to increase consumer awareness through education and exposure to these features.

Advertising fuels the vast majority of free content and experiences available to consumers across the Internet today.  The sites that invest the time, energy, employees, and technology to provide these free experiences have a critical perspective and must be partners in the conversation with the companies that develop web browsers. All stakeholders should seek to find solutions that provide consumer privacy protections and continue to support a content publisher’s ability to monetize their efforts.

Yahoo! strongly supports the standards development process and is submitting these recommendations in the hope that vigorous, enlightened, respectful debate ensues to drive consensus towards a solution that meets the needs of consumers, publishers, advertisers, and the parties that support each.

Shane Wiley
Sr. Director – Privacy & Data Governance
Yahoo!

Yahoo! is excited to further our commitment to increased transparency and control by updating our implementation of the Advertising Option Icon (CLEAR Ad Notice) to the “Forward-i” icon recently announced by the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA). CLEAR Ad Notice provides users a simple link on or near an ad to provide more information about how interest-based advertising works and tools to manage their advertising experience.

Yahoo! began our implementation of CLEAR Ad Notice in April 2010 with an early version of the advertising icon – the “Power-i”.  Since that time, we have served the CLEAR Ad Notice over 1.5 trillion times across Yahoo! properties in the US.  In an effort to significantly increase the level of consumer awareness and control with respect to interest-based advertising in other markets, Yahoo! launched CLEAR Ad Notice in January 2011 on the Yahoo! sign-in page across France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom.

Today’s change in Yahoo!’s CLEAR Ad Notice implementation to the “Forward-i” continues to serve as a consistent reminder to consumers to learn more about and manage their interest-based advertising experience.  The roll-out of the new icon will take some time, but you will start noticing the Forward-i icon replace the current icon over the next few months on the ads you see across Yahoo! properties.

Vinay Goel
Sr. Manager, Advertising and Analytics Privacy
Yahoo!

Yahoo! believes strongly in empowering users through providing transparency into our data collection and use practices and providing tools to exercise user choice in this regard.  This is evidenced through Yahoo’s leadership in partnering with the DAA and others in industry to develop ground breaking privacy enhancing tools for consumers, such as CLEAR Ad Notice,  Ad Interest Manager, and Persistent Opt-outs, not to mention footer links that help visitors learn more About our Ads and connect to our privacy center which carries a wealth of easily accessible information.

Recently each of the major web browser vendors have released features that place user choice tools within the web browser itself, responding to regulatory calls for “Do Not Track” capabilities.  Yahoo! is working with each of these vendors to better understand their solutions and how best to align our efforts.  In our recent response to the FTC request for comment, Yahoo! highlighted that some of these approaches would require websites to be reengineered to read new header signals broadcast to web publishers.  Further, Microsoft’s introduction of Traffic Protection Lists focuses on 3^rd party data collection and could be very disruptive for users, even blocking the basic rendering of content.  This approach “breaks” many websites, including Yahoo!,  that aggregate or license content from third parties– or support and supply content for third party sites.

Yahoo! values the Federal Trade Commission’s statement with respect to DNT in their proposed privacy framework that “any such mechanism should not undermine the benefits that online behavioral advertising has to offer, by funding online content and services and providing personalized advertisements that many consumers value.”  Yahoo! believes approaches that allow users to consume content as expected and opt-out of Interest-based advertising and content data use – essentially preserving the customization our users have come to rely on with Yahoo! – are the preferred way to approach DNT.

Shane Wiley
Sr. Director – Privacy & Data Governance
Yahoo!