WHAT ARE COOKIES AND WHY DO WE USE THEM?
Cookies are small text files that are placed onto your computer by websites and/or applications that you visit. Cookies are used to help us improve your experience when using our websites – for example, storing your preferred language setting for the next time you visit.
The information we collect from cookies enables us to:
- Tailor our websites to your personal needs
- Remember the notifications that you have been shown, so that you are not shown them again
- Make improvements and updates to our websites based on the way you want to use them
We generally do not use cookies to identify you personally.
WHAT KIND OF COOKIES DO WE USE?
We use the following categories of cookies:
Category 1: necessary cookies
Necessary cookies enable you to use our websites and all their features, such as enabling access to secure areas of the website. Without these cookies you may not be able to use all the features of our websites.
Category 2: performance cookies
Performance cookies collect information about how you use our websites so we can improve them for you in future. For example, they collect information on which pages you visit most often and any error messages you may get. The information collected by these cookies is anonymous. They do not collect any information that can identify you personally.
- Google Analytics (universal): we are using Google Universal Analytics to monitor our website performances and check visitor activities to adapt our content based on their expectations
- Hotjar: we are using Hotjar to validate that our website design and user experience are performing as expected and offer the best possible experience to our visitors. We also use it to perform surveys on pages and collect visitor feedback, when they want to share it with us
Category 3: functionality cookies
Functionality cookies enable us to provide you with a more personalized experience. They help us to remember data, such as your username and language preference, to save you having to enter them again the next time you visit. The information these cookies collect is anonymous. They cannot track your browsing activity on other websites.
Category 4: targeting/advertising cookies
We and our service providers may use advertising cookies to deliver ads that we believe are relevant to you and your interests.
For example, we may use targeting or advertising cookies to customize the advertising and content you receive on our websites, to limit the number of times you see the same ad on our websites and to help measure the effectiveness of our advertising campaigns.
- Eloqua: Eloqua is our provider of digital marketing automation and analytics software and services. We use it to monitor our email marketing activities
- Facebook Pixel: we use Facebook pixel tracking to measure social media campaign efficiency related to the Facebook platform
- Google Adwords (conversion): we use Google Adwords cookies to customize the advertising and content you see for our website, limit the number of ads you see for our website, and measure the effectiveness of our campaign
- Google Adwords (remarketing): we use Google Adwords remarketing cookies to collect data about your activities when you visit our websites, the website of entities who serve our ads (advertisers), or the website and online services where we display ads
- Bing Ads (News): we use Bing Ad cookies to record the completion of transactions you make on our websites
Google Adwords and Bing Ads cookies may be used to customize the advertising and content you see in our websites. These cookies will be used to provide relevant Ads about our services and are intended to improve the customer experience across SGS Websites. No personally identifiable information is stored in any of the platforms mentioned above.
Category 5: social media cookies
SGS websites use third-party cookies from social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to enable in-depth campaign reporting and to track social network users when they visit our websites, by using a tagging mechanism provided by those social networks. These cookies can also be used for event tracking and remarketing purposes. Any data collected with these tags will be used in accordance with the SGS privacy policy and with the social network’s privacy policies. SGS websites will not collect or store any personally identifiable information from the user.
- LinkedIn: we use LinkedIn tracking to measure social media campaign efficiency related to the LinkedIn platform
- Twitter: we use Twitter tracking to measure social media campaign efficiency related to the twitter platform
