Ms Joanne Neary:

I will just talk the committee through it. I thought it would be useful to give a brief outline of online behavioural advertising, OBA. Political micro-targeting may be a subset of it. Many of the committee members may have heard of OBA before. It is a form of sophisticated advertising which occurs in an online space. Advertising networks and other organisations that serve this type of advertising include search engines and social media websites. In simple terms, OBA is a form of targeted advertising which monitors the behaviour of individuals online and shows individuals advertisements based on information collected. We can break it down into three main parts. The first is the collection of personal data online. The second is that the person is allocated into a so-called "interest segment" based on his or her online behaviour. The third is that he or she is displayed ads on the basis of his or her interest segment.

What do we mean when we say that advertising networks are collecting personal information online? Personal information online is collected via technological tools which I will speak about in a moment. The types of information that may be collected concern the behaviour that advertising networks can track online, for example what websites individuals visit, advertisements they may have clicked or products they may have purchased or viewed. This information is collated and individuals are put into interest segments. For example, if I look at particular bookstores online and potentially at a particular type of book, I may be allocated to the interest segment of people who will purchase books in the future.

The ads are presented based on the interest segment the individual is in and that is essentially the flow of OBA.

I mentioned that a number of technological tools are employed in the online context to allow advertising networks to serve users OBA. These tools are called cookies, tags, pixels, beacons and so on. Many members may already have heard of cookies in particular. We all know that when we visit websites, we get a so-called cookie banner which pops up, and the user may have to accept cookies in order to continue. All of these tools essentially service the same purpose, namely, to track different types of information online. I mentioned some forms of information that these types of technological tools may gather. To expand on that, these tools are looking, for example, at the clicks a user makes on a website, how many times someone has visited a web page or how many times they have visited part of a web page. If there is an embedded video within a web page, such tools observe how long someone has spent on that video or on other parts of the page. They can be used to track whether an email has been opened and, if so, how long it was opened for; how often someone visits a web page; a person's buying habits as a result of clicks - whether they click through to an item and eventually buy it - and to track clicks and progression through a site and over different websites.

To take a really basic example of simple targeting versus OBA and interest-based targeting, targeting would be if I ran a website for a hotel and targeted the individuals who land on that page in relation to other types of services my hotel might offer or perhaps attractions within the area. That would be a simple form of targeting based on the fact that the user is interested in coming to my hotel. OBA, on the other hand, would take the behaviour that the advertising network has seen the user exhibit. For example, if someone has gone to many websites related to spas in the area or something like that, the hotel will then show him or her related adverts. The hotel's website might advertise its spa or a special offer on one of its treatments. That is the progression of OBA and how it can be a more sophisticated form of targeting.

The commissioner has already touched on ways to limit OBA online and how users can do so if that is what they want. A number of controls are available to users to limit their OBA exposure online, which exist in a number of different fora. There are browser-based controls, for example, in Internet Explorer, Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox, where there might be ways to turn off particular types of tracking. Similarly, controls are provided by the advertising network themselves. Those networks which serve ads might also centrally have tools people can use to adjust their OBA preferences. The industry bodies in this area also have very good tools available. IAB Ireland is the Irish trade association for digital advertising. It has come up with a website, youronlinechoices.eu, in conjunction with a European affiliate. That website shows exactly what companies or websites are tracking an individual's behaviour and gives the option to toggle them on and off. It is a really useful tool. It is also worth noting that individuals' OBA assessments may be linked across different devices. They may need to adjust their choices on their mobile phone as well as on their laptop or PC. Our guidance is available on our website in respect of tailoring social media and advertising preferences. It also details the way in which a user can toggle his or her advertising preferences on specific social media websites. There are other controls available on other websites that people may avail of in that regard.

Opting out of OBA does not mean one is opting out of online advertising. Opting out of OBA means opting out of the monitoring and targeted advertising which OBA presents to users.