Effective date: October 5, 2012
Last revised: 15 May 2018
We use cookies and other technologies on this website to improve its performance and enhance users’ experiences. This policy explains how we do that.
Cookies are small text files placed by web servers on your computer or mobile device when you access websites. “First party” cookies are set by websites that you are visiting at the time. “Third party” cookies are set by domains other than those of the websites that you visit.
“Session” cookies remain on your computer or mobile device during your visit and expire when you close your browser. “Persistent” cookies, conversely, remain on your computer/device for a period of time specified in the cookie.
We use first party persistent cookies to set and remember your preferences for repeat visits to our site. We use third party persistent cookies from eTracker and HubSpot, Inc, to analyze how our visitors use our website and to monitor website performance.
We maintain a list of cookies that we use on this site and we update the list at least annually.
Most cookies fall into one or more of the following categories:
GfK provides visitors convenient tools to share content on our website with their social networks, including Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. When you click on a third party social widget or button to share content, the third party will learn that you have visited our website and may subsequently use information about your visit to target advertising to you on other websites.
To protect your privacy, we have programmed the social widgets on our site so that they are disabled by default. Information about your visit to our website is not shared with social media companies unless you click on their respective widgets.
We do not display behaviorally-targeted advertising on this website; however, our Digital Market Intelligence (DMI) division works closely with advertising networks and publishers to help them measure and optimize campaigns on websites that display ads.
Yes, you can adjust the privacy settings in your browser to block all cookies; however, this could severely affect your browsing experience as many websites may not function properly. Your browser may allow you to delete all cookies upon closing your browser. This option, though, results in persistent cookies getting deleted that may store your preferences and personalized settings on websites that you visit regularly. It is possible to keep desired cookies, though, as your browser may allow you to specify which websites are always or never allowed to use cookies.
Our web analytics provider, etracker as well as our marketing partner HubSpot, Inc, does not use your device’s entire Internet Protocol (IP) address for analysis and its cookies do not collect personal data. Nevertheless, if you would like your anonymous browsing to be completely excluded from collection by etracker, simply click the following link and enter the characters that appear on your screen http://www.etracker.de/privacy?et=DKbY3K.
A preference cookie will then be set on your device and remain in effect provided that it is not deleted.
Our marketing communications and survey invitation emails may contain web beacons to tell us whether our emails are opened and to verify any clicks through to links within the email. We may use this information to determine which of our emails are more interesting to users, to improve the quality of the emails that we send and to query users who do not open our emails whether they wish to continue receiving them. The web beacon is deleted when you delete the email.
If you would prefer not to have web beacons in the emails that you receive, you should adjust your email program to receive messages in plain text rather than HTML. It is also possible to detect and control web beacons that are present on web pages by downloading a plug-in for your browser.
Comprehensive information on how organizations use cookies is available at: www.allaboutcookies.org
The list of GfK and third party cookies below was current 15 May 2018. It is updated at least annually.
None
www.etracker.com
Cookie name: _et_coid
Duration: 2 years
Purpose: Set by GfK’s website analytics provider, eTracker, to keep track of repeat visitors.
Cookie name: et_id
Duration: 2 years
Purpose: Set by GfK’s website analytics provider, eTracker, to keep track of repeat visitors.
Cookie name: etcnt_252903
Duration: 30 days
Purpose: Set by GfK’s website analytics provider, eTracker, to keep track of repeat visitors.
Cookie name: noWS_DKbY3K
Duration: Session
Purpose: Set by GfK’s website analytics provider, eTracker, to keep track of repeat visitors.
www.hubspot.com
Cookie name: __hstc
Duration: 13 months
Purpose: Set by our marketing partner HubSpot, inc. The main cookie for tracking visitors. It contains the domain, utk, initial timestamp (first visit), last timestamp (last visit), current timestamp (this visit), and session number (increments for each subsequent session).
Cookie name: hubspotutk
Duration: 13 months
Purpose: Set by our marketing partner HubSpot, inc. This cookie is used for to keep track of a visitor's identity. This cookie is passed to HubSpot on form submission and used when deduplicating contacts.
Cookie name: __hssc
Duration: 30 minutes
Purpose: Set by our marketing partner HubSpot, inc. Cookie for keeping track of sessions. This is used to determine if we should increment the session number and timestamps in the __hstc cookie. It contains the domain, viewCount (increments each pageView in a session), and session start timestamp.
Cookie name: __hssrc
Duration: Session
Purpose: Set by our marketing partner HubSpot, inc. Whenever HubSpot changes the session cookie, this cookie is also set to determine if the visitor has restarted their browser. If this cookie does not exist when HubSpot manages cookies, it is considered a new session.
Cookie name: __hs_opt_out
Duration: 13 months
Purpose: Set by our marketing partner HubSpot, inc. This cookie is used by the opt-in privacy policy to remember not to ask the user to accept cookies again.
Cookie name: __hs_do_not_track
Duration: 13 months
Purpose: Set by our marketing partner HubSpot, inc. This cookie is set when you opt out of our cookie policy. It disables tracking and personalization.
Cookie name: __hs_ab_test
Duration: Session
Purpose: Set by our marketing partner HubSpot, inc. This cookie is used to consistently serve visitors the same version of an A/B test page they’ve seen before.
Cookie name: hsPagesViewedThisSession
Duration: Session cookie
Purpose: Set by our marketing partner HubSpot, inc. This cookie used to keep track of page views in a session.
Cookie name: <id>_key
Purpose: When visiting a password-protected page, this cookie is set so future visits to the page from the same browser do not require login again. The cookie name is unique for each password-protected page.