Cookies and Interest-based Advertising Policy
What are Cookies?
Cookies and similar tracking technologies, such as beacons, scripts, web beacons and tags (which together we refer to as “cookies”), are small bits of text, usually stored on a user’s computer hard drive or within a browser. They enable a website to remember information about the user’s visit to the website. On mobile websites and mobile applications, we use device IDs and / or Advertising IDs in a similar manner to which we use cookies.
We and certain third-party partners (as described below) use cookies on our websites, our mobile applications and within emails or other communications we send to you (we refer to these together as our “Sites”).
To the extent the cookies we use for these purposes lead to the processing of your personal information, details about how we use that personal information and your rights over that personal information are discussed in our Privacy Policy.
What Types of Cookies are used on our Sites and what do we use them for?
OpenTable uses “first party cookies,” i.e., those that are used solely by us or by third parties who act only on our instructions or on our behalf. These types of cookies are used for our own analysis of our own Sites, or to provide functionality such as remembering your language preference.
Other cookies on our Sites are used both by us for the purposes described in this policy and by third parties for purposes where those third parties may wish to combine information from our Sites with information from other sites to improve their services. For example, these types of cookies may be used for interest-based advertising purposes.
The cookies used on our Sites, by either us or by third parties, can be “session” cookies, or “persistent” cookies. “Session” cookies are deleted automatically when you close your browser, and are used for things like ensuring you are kept logged in as you navigate around our Sites. “Persistent” cookies remain stored on your device or browser even after you close it. These cookies are used, for example, to recognize you when you come back to our Sites.
We divide the cookies we use into three categories:
Type of Cookie
Required
Description of how we use this type of cookie
To provide a secure log-in to our Sites.
To keep you logged in so that you do not have to log in repeatedly to access different pages of the Sites.
To allow us to remember how far you are through a booking, to ensure that the booking process can be completed.
What choices do you have?
Required cookies are necessary for our Sites to operate. On some platforms, you can delete all cookies, but this may affect the basic functionality of the Sites.
Type of Cookie
Functional
Description of how we use this type of cookie
To recognize if you have visited previously, and remember your preferences from past visits, such as your language preference.
To track when you make purchases or bookings on websites operated by our group companies (e.g., travel bookings on KAYAK or Booking.com or car rentals on Rentalcars.com), so that we can display your bookings with our group companies on your OpenTable account page.
To improve our Sites and our offerings by helping us to understand how users use the Sites and to analyze trends which appear in that data. For example, we make changes to the user interface if we can see that certain pages are difficult for a large number of users to navigate. We also collect broad information about how our users use the Sites, for example, to understand which aspects of our Sites and our services are particularly popular, so that we can make improvements going forward.
To personalize your experience of our Sites, for example, by suggesting restaurants or showing you offers on our homepage or in emails that are most relevant to you based on your previous visits to our Sites or those operated by our group companies.
What choices do you have?
Where required by law, functional cookies will be used only on the Sites where you have given your consent to their use.
You can change your cookie preferences at any time using the “Cookie Preferences” tool available in the footer of our Sites.
You can opt out of our use of Google Analytics by downloading the browser add-on here.
Type of Cookie
Advertising (e.g., Google DoubleClick, AdWords)
Description of how we use this type of cookie
To recognize you if you have used our services on another device. We combine information received from multiple devices to determine if you are using a new device, so that we can continue to provide you with a personalized experience on our Sites.
To enable you to post to social media sites and other platforms, for example, to allow you to access a particular social media page to post a comment or a “like.”
To collect information for use in advertising on our own Sites and on third party sites which you may visit. Such information is based on your preferences and your usage of our Sites. We have included more information about our use of advertising cookies below.
What choices do you have?
Where required by law, advertising cookies will be used only on the Sites where you have given your consent to their use.
You can change your cookies preferences at any time using the “Cookie Preferences” tool available in the footer of our Sites.
You can opt out of our use of Google Analytics by downloading the browser add-on here.
Our Advertising Cookies
We work with third-parties that place cookies on our Sites to provide their services, including:
- Ad Targeting. We work with third-party advertising companies to serve ads while you are visiting our Sites and to permit these companies to place and access their own cookies on your computer in the course of serving advertisements on our Sites.
These companies may use information obtained through their cookie (which does not include your name, address, e-mail address or telephone number) about your visits to our Sites and other websites, in combination with information about your purchases and interests from other online sites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you.
We also allow certain third parties (as described in our Privacy Policy to collect web log data from you (which may include IP address, where permitted, and information about your browser or operating system), when you visit our Sites, or to place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser to enable you to receive customized ads or content. The cookies may reflect de-identified usage data or other data linked to data you voluntarily have submitted to us, for example, your email address, that we may share with third parties solely in hashed, non-human-readable form. - Advertising Analytics/Measurement. We make use of analytics cookies as part of our online advertising campaigns to learn how users interact with our Sites after they have been shown an online advertisement, which may include advertisements on third-party websites. In particular, our Sites use Google Analytics 360 Suite, including Google Analytics Advertising, which are web analytics and analytics advertising services provided by Google, Inc., which use third party cookies. Where required, our Sites have activated the IP address anonymization functionality so that the IP address of the user is shortened by Google. Our Sites also use the following Google Analytics Advertising features: Google Remarketing, Google Segments, Double Click by Google, AdWords and BigQuery. These features use third party cookies to collect information about our website traffic by tracking users across websites and across time and generating reports for us to better understand our website users and to create audiences for our advertisements based on such understanding.
- Remarketing Pixel Tags. In addition, we may share website usage information about visitors to our Sites with third-party advertising companies for the purpose of managing and targeting advertisements and for market research analysis on our Sites and other sites. For these purposes, we and our third-party advertising companies may place pixel tags (also called clear gifs) on some of the pages you visit on our Sites. We will then use the information that is collected using these pixel tags to serve you relevant advertisements when you are visiting other sites on the Internet. These advertisements may be based on your interests, for example, on the basis of specific searches you conducted on OpenTable during earlier browsing sessions.
- Other Cookies: Our partners, who provide certain features on our Sites or display advertising based on your browsing activity, also use Local Storage such as HTML5, to collect and store content information and preferences. Please note that different web browsers offer their own management tools for removing HTML5 local storage.
Mobile Devices, Anonymous Device Identifiers and Hashed IDs. We and/or third parties that we have engaged may collect and store a unique identifier matched to your mobile device, in order to deliver customized ads or content while you use applications or surf the internet, or to identify you in a unique manner across other devices or browsers. In order to customize these ads or content, we or a third party may collect de-identified usage data or other data about you which you have either voluntarily submitted to us, for example, your email address, or has been passively collected from you, such as your device identifier or IP address, where permitted. However, if we share your email address, we share it solely in hashed, non-human-readable form.
Your Cookie Choices
We provide you with choices over the use of cookies as described in this policy.
Browsers. If you are located in the European Economic Area, when you first visit our websites, you will see our Cookie Preferences options, which allow you to choose whether you would like to accept only Required cookies, or whether to accept Functional or Advertising cookies as well. You can update your choices at any time by clicking “Cookie Preferences” in the website footer, or here.
More generally, you may be able to change the settings to have your browser refuse certain cookies or notify you before accepting cookies. To do so, please follow the instructions provided by your browser which are usually located within the “Help”, “Tools” or “Edit” facility. Some third parties also provide the ability to refuse their cookies directly by clicking on an opt-out link, and we have tried to indicate where this is possible in the table above.
You can also find more information about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set on your device and how to manage and delete them, at www.allaboutcookies.org and www.youronlinechoices.eu.
Mobile Devices. If you no longer wish to receive interest-based advertising on your mobile applications, please refer to your device’s operating system settings and follow instructions below.
- iOS users: To use the “Limit Ad-Tracking” option, follow the instructions provided by Apple here: Apple Support Center
- Android Users: To use the “opt-out of interest-based advertising” option, follow the instructions provided by Google here: Google Play Help
- Users of other mobile operating systems: Options may be available in your mobile device’s settings menus.
- You may also consider downloading the DAA AppChoices Mobile App to manage online behavioral advertising technology.
If you no longer wish to receive interest-based advertising on your mobile device browser, you can follow the steps in relation to Browsers outlined above.
Do-Not-Track Signals. We currently do not employ technology that recognizes “do-not-track” signals from your browser, but if you enable browser-level opt-out preferences through global privacy control, our Services will treat this signal as a request to opt-out of the selling or sharing of your data collected through cookies for interest-based advertising purposes.
Please keep in mind that, without cookies, you may not have access to certain features on our Sites, including access to your profile/account and certain personalized content. Removing all cookies from your computer could also affect your subsequent visits to certain websites, including our Sites, by requiring that, for example, you enter your login name when you return to that website. Please note that even if you exercise any of the choices described above, you will still see ads, but they will not be based upon the information collected through these tracking technologies and therefore not necessarily relevant to your interests.
Privacy Policy. Please review our privacy policy for additional details about how we collect, use, and disclose information in connection with our Sites, including personal information obtained from cookies, and for information about how to contact us if you have any questions.