We use different types of cookies on our Site for various purposes set out below. Some of these cookies are placed by us and others by third-parties (e.g. social media platform, advertising and analytics providers etc.). You can find more information about the individual cookies used and the third parties which set the cookies on this Site in your browser, as well as in the Cookie Preferences Portal that you can find at the bottom of the Site (a green cookie icon).
Required cookies - These cookies are required for the operation of our Site, to enable core Site functions, to ensure the Site is secure and to enable us to manage the network. They are sometimes referred to as “strictly necessary” or “essential” cookies. Without these cookies the Site cannot function properly. They include, for example, cookies that allow us to remember your cookie consent preferences and balance network load, enable you to log into secure areas of our Site and to access user accounts or online forms, use a shopping cart, make use of e-billing services, and download voucher coupons.
Functional and analytical cookies - These cookies are either functional or analytical. They are used to improve functionality, improve and personalise browsing experience, and to analyse Site traffic and usage.
Analytics cookies allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our Site. They help us understand and measure how you interact with our Site, allow us to gather statistics about our Site visitors to better understand them and to improve the way our Site works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily. Analytics cookies also allow us to test new Site content, features or interactions so we can improve the Site experience and appearance for all.
Functional cookies are used to enhance what you can do on our Site. Examples include to help us to give you better and customized user experience to test and provide the best Site design, layout and content, and to remember choices you have made between sessions This enables us to enhance and personalise our content for you, greet you by name and remember your preferences (for example, your choice of language or region).
In addition, certain third-party cookies are necessary to allow some Site-embedded functionalities to work. These cookies are dropped by third parties only if you interact with certain functionality on the Site. Provided that consent is required in your country, at each place on our Site where this applies, you will be told that cookies will be placed on your device by the relevant third party and that by clicking on the given functionality, you are indicating that you consent to the setting of cookies by that third party. If you do not allow these cookies, you may not be able to use the functionality. These cookies cannot be managed through our Cookie Preferences Portal but can be disabled and deleted via your browser settings, as explained below.
Examples of how cookies are used in this way include our use of YouTube on the Site for showing videos, where YouTube sets cookies on your device once you click on the YouTube video to play. Please note that in terms of playing YouTube videos on our Site, we promote using the “privacy enhanced mode” to prevent the setting of cookies that track viewing behaviour to the storage of personally-identifiable cookie information by YouTube.
Similarly, our Site may include some social media sharing functionalities, such as the Facebook “Like” button, the Twitter “Tweet” button, or the LinkedIn “Share” button to allow you to share pages with social networks and to allow you to post comments and so on. These features may collect your IP address and which page you are visiting on our Site, and set cookies or employ similar technologies to enable the feature to function properly. These third parties can place cookies only if you interact with the relevant functionality on the Site. We have no control over how these social networks collect and use your personal information and their use is subject to the social network’s privacy policy (you can find the relevant privacy policy on the social network’s website or via the links in our Cookie Preferences Portal).
Advertising cookies - These cookies are used for advertising our products, brands, or services, for example, to show you advertisements that are more relevant to your interests based on your online activity (also known as personalized or interest-based advertising), or to prevent the same ads from continuously re-appearing.
Cookies in this category enables us to collect information across the sites you visit, to record your visit to our Site, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed, our brand emails you view and links you click in the emails, to track your online activities across your computer, mobile phone or other devices you use, including the mobile apps you use.
We use this information to try to predict what advertisements for our products or brands might be the most interesting to you, and to make our Site and the advertising displayed on it or on other sites more relevant to you.
We also use the cookies in this category to place you into a group of consumers who show the same interests (e.g. age, gender, interest category) (also known as an “audience”). Generally, this process does not require us to know you as an identifiable individual, only that someone using your browser showed interest in a product. We may add other information to this, such as information about the products you buy in an online shop, or information that you provide directly to us when creating an account on our Sites, or information about your browsing history.
By using advertising cookies, we can:
- learn about trends, habits, or characteristics from a group of consumers who all act similarly;
- show you personalized advertisements on our Site or other sites you visit;
- find others who appear to be similar in interests, characteristics or behaviours to those already in the interest group, so we can reach more potential customers by showing relevant advertising to them.
We partner with third-party service providers (e.g. Google, Facebook, Amazon etc.) which may use cookies, web beacons and other storage technologies to collect or receive information from our Site. These third parties use this information to help us with the advertising described above including to target ads and to provide us with measurement services and reports of the success of our advertising campaigns that are run through our Sites or other sites across the internet.
We may also cooperate with third-party commercial partners to deliver joint digital advertising campaigns related to brands and products in our portfolios. For that purpose we and our commercial partners (acting as joint controllers of your personal data) may exchange insights on shared user audiences using pixel technology with unique IDs provided by service providers, such as Meta. This allows us to deliver more relevant adverts to you across other platforms (such as Meta) and reach people similar to you within the common audience segment determined together with our partners.
If you turn off these cookies you will see less targeted, interest-based advertising; however, it does not mean you will not see any advertisements. Even if you opt-out receiving interest-based advertisements, you will still be shown advertisements about our products or brands based on the context of the sites you visit (these are called “contextual ads”).
If you want to learn more about interest-based advertising and cross-device linking, you may find it useful to visit the Network Advertising Initiative website at https://thenai.org/about-online-advertising/ .
In general, when we share information about your use of our Site with our third parties, we do not pass to them any personally identifiable information obtained through cookies used on our Site.