Introduction
This Privacy Policy sets out the commitment of Kantar Media UK Ltd (“Kantar”, “we” or “us”) to the privacy of its respondents. It explains how we collect, use and disclose data that we obtain from respondents, and respondents’ rights regarding privacy and data protection.
This Privacy Policy relates specifically to respondents who have been invited by our recruitment partners to participate in the following surveys:
'National Buying Survey'
'Your Lifestyle Survey'
'Northern Ireland Consumer Survey'
'Consumer Survey of Ireland'
We ask you to read this Privacy Policy carefully.
For the purpose of this policy, the definition of ‘personal data’ is information which relates to and can identify a living individual. Where we refer to ‘individual survey responses’ in the table below, we mean the data collected from you within our questionnaires, such as information on your product consumption and ownership, media habits, and attitudes.
Lawful collection and use
Kantar will respect your privacy and the confidentiality of your data will be maintained as described in this Privacy Policy.
Data covered by this Privacy Policy includes:
• Data that we receive from the recruitment partner who invited you to participate in the survey, including demographic and geodemographic information, partial postcode, and a panellist ID that uniquely identifies you within the recruitment partner database.
• Individual survey responses (as described above) that you provide to Kantar, which will be linked to your panellist ID. Sometimes this may include personal data collected within the survey, such as your postcode information.
We use the personal data we receive or collect from you for the following purposes:
| Use Case | Purpose |
Data collected/ processed |
Legal Basis |
| Provide aggregated data to our clients | Your individual survey responses will be combined with those of all other participants to create an aggregated database for our clients. This database is used to understand the media usage, product consumption and attitudes of different groups of people (for example, 10% of a particular age group uses product X), and will not contain any information from which you can be personally identified. |
Individual survey responses | Voluntary participation in a survey whereby we ask for your consent to use of your personal data. |
| Provide record-level data to our clients | We also provide clients with access to your survey results at an individual level, not aggregated with the survey responses of other participants. As with the above use case, this data is used to understand the media usage, product consumption and attitudes of different groups of people (for example, 10% of a particular age group uses product X). Our clients import the data at an individual record level in order to perform more detailed statistical analysis for the purposes of understanding group behaviours and attitudes. You will not be personally identified within this data. We aggregate and remove some of your survey responses to reduce the risk of identification from the data and have contractual agreements in place with all clients prohibiting them from identifying you. | Individual survey responses | Voluntary participation in a survey whereby we ask for your consent to use of your personal data. |
| Identify other surveys that may be relevant to you | If you are a Kantar panellist we may use your panellist ID to share your individual survey responses with the Kantar panel, to allow them to identify and invite you to participate in other surveys that are relevant to you. | Individual survey responses, Panellist ID | Voluntary participation in a survey whereby we ask for your consent to use of your personal data |
| Combine data with your answers to other surveys | If you are a Kantar panellist we may use your panellist ID to share your individual survey responses with the Kantar panel, to allow them to combine your responses to our survey with your responses given to other surveys conducted by that recruitment partner. | Individual survey responses, Panellist ID | Voluntary participation in a survey whereby we ask for your consent to use of your personal data |
| Contact you regarding follow-up studies | We may ask the recruitment partner that invited you to participate in our survey to contact you for further studies. Your participation in these further studies is entirely voluntary. In order to effectively target these further studies, Kantar may use your survey answers to identify relevant surveys for you (for example, if you have told us that you read newspapers, we may send you a survey on newspapers). | Individual survey responses, Panellist ID | Voluntary participation in a survey whereby we ask for your consent to use of your personal data |
| Data matching and enrichment | We enrich the data we hold on file about you by matching your personal data with the personal data held by third parties. We utilise matching services (i.e. third parties who are specialised in data management) to acquire additional information about you. The matching service (our data partner) holds the personal data we share for a short time, uses it to assemble the additional information, and then returns the combined information to us. Data partners are contractually bound to delete the data we share with them and/or are not authorised to use it in any way other than for this specific purpose. | Postcode | Voluntary participation in a survey whereby we ask for your consent to use of your personal data |
| Customer database enrichment and Advertising targeting |
We use your personal data to help our clients and data partners identify people who are similar to you , in order to make inferences about their characteristics and make decisions about the advertising these people see. Our clients and data partners use statistics derived from your data to predict the behaviours and interests of other individuals – by looking at the patterns in Kantar’s data or the patterns that result from matching Kantar’s data to the data of those other individuals. We include contractual safeguards to ensure that you will not automatically be contacted or targeted for commercial purposes, as a result of your data being used to help create a lookalike audience, and that our data partners cannot use your data for any other purpose. |
Panellist ID | Voluntary participation in a survey whereby we ask for your consent to use of your personal data |
Third parties and data transfer across borders:
Your personal data may be collected, stored, transferred or processed by our companies within the Kantar Group, or third-party service providers for research-related purposes. This may involve data processing both within and outside the UK and the EEA. All parties are contractually bound to keep any information they collect and disclose to us or, we collect and disclose to them, confidential and must protect it with security standards and practices that are equivalent to our own. If your personal data has been transferred to, stored, or otherwise processed to a territory outside the UK or EEA (as applicable) and that territory has not been recognised as providing an adequate level of protection of personal data, we will put in place an appropriate legal safeguard. For example, standard contractual clauses approved by the European Commission and other relevant authorities, working with parties that have implemented binding corporate rules or other intra-group processes, obtaining your consent to transfer personal data, where the transfer is necessary for the performance of a contract between us or where a contract was entered into on your behalf, or where the transfer is necessary to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.
Confidentiality, security and industry requirements:
We have appropriate technological and organisational measures in place to protect your personal data and take all reasonable steps to ensure your personal data is processed securely. All information you provide us is stored in secure servers and environments. Unfortunately, no data transmission can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal data, we cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us or from our online products or services, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your transmission, we will take reasonable steps to ensure our systems are secure.
All our third party contractors, site service providers and employees are contractually obliged to follow our policies and procedures regarding confidentiality, security and privacy.
We adhere to the following industry requirements:
- The UK GDPR, UK Data Protection Act 2018, the EU GDPR ,the Irish Data Protection Act 2018 and any subsequent legislation, which may be amended from time to time
- We follow the MRS and ESOMAR professional Codes of Conduct
- In the UK, Kantar hold Market Research Society (MRS) Company Partner accreditation
Cookie disclosures:
Cookies are small text files stored on your computer or device by a website that assigns a numerical user ID and stores certain information about your online browsing. They are used by web developers to help users navigate their websites efficiently and perform certain functions. The website sends information to the browser which then creates a text file. Every time the user goes back to the same website, the browser retrieves and sends this file to the website's server.
We do not use cookies on standard online in-house surveys. Where cookies are required by a partners platform, this is notified by the platform privacy notice/policy.
Accuracy:
We take all reasonable steps to keep your personal data accurate, complete, current and relevant, based on the most recent information provided to us. If you would like to update your personal data, please contact us using the details provided below.
We rely on you to help us keep your personal information accurate, complete and current by answering our questions honestly and you are responsible for ensuring that we are notified of any updates or changes to your personal data.
Children’s data collection:
We never knowingly invite children under the age of 16 years to participate in surveys without consent. If it is necessary and appropriate to a particular project to directly involve children under the age of 16 years, we take measures to ensure we have been given permission by the responsible adult. We do not sell children’s personal data.
Sensitive/special category data collection:
In our survey we may request to collect personal data that is classified as “special categories” of personal data. This includes racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, or trade union membership, genetic data, biometric data for the purpose of uniquely identifying a natural person, data concerning health or data concerning a natural person's sex life or sexual orientation. You will always be able to choose whether or not to provide this data to us to be used as described.
Rights of individuals:
To request access to personal data that we hold about you, you should submit your request in writing to the e-mail address or postal address shown below in “How to Contact Us”.
If you contact us using an email address or contact details for which we do not hold a record, you will also need to provide a copy of a valid government issued or official identification (such as drivers licence or passport).
You have the following rights in relation to your personal data:
- Right to change your mind and to withdraw your consent
- Right to access your personal data
- Right to rectify your personal data
- Right to erase your personal data from our systems, unless we have legitimate interest reasons for continuing to process the information
- Right to port your personal data (portability right)
- Right to restrict processing of your personal data
- Right to object to the processing of your personal data
- Right to not be discriminated against for exercising any of the rights available to you under applicable data protection laws
If necessary, we will notify any other parties such as our suppliers or service providers to whom we have transferred your personal data of any changes that we make when you make a request. Note that while we communicate to these third parties, we are not responsible for the actions taken by these third parties to answer your request. You may be able to access your personal data held by these third parties and correct, amend or delete it where it is inaccurate.
Data storage and retention:
Personal data will be retained only for such period as is appropriate for its intended and lawful use, in this case we shall retain data for no longer than 4 years, unless otherwise required to do so by law. Personal data that is no longer required will be disposed of in ways that ensure their confidential nature is not compromised.
As part of the Company Business Continuity plan and in certain instances the law, our electronic systems are backed up and archived. These archives are retained for a defined period of time in a strictly controlled environment. Once expired, the data is deleted and the physical media destroyed to ensure the data is erased completely.
Notification of material changes:
We keep our privacy policy under regular review and it may be amended from time to time. We will always have the most up-to-date policy on this web page. We will record when the policy was last revised.
Date created: 13/06/2011
Last revised: 02/2023
Automated decision making / profiling:
In certain circumstances we may carry out automated decision making or profiling about you. However, in the majority of cases this will not result in any legally significant decisions being made about you. You have the right to appeal if any automated decision made about you is legally significant. If you have any questions about this, please contact us.
How to contact us:
If you have any questions, comments or requests related to this privacy policy, you can contact us by emailing privacy-media@kantar.com. or writing to Privacy Enquiries, Kantar Media UK Ltd, 222 Gray’s Inn Road, London WC1X 8HB.
If you have any questions or comments you may contact Kantar’s Data Protection Officer, please email dataprotection@kantar.com.
Complaints and country specific disclosures:
If you are not satisfied with how we handle and protect personal data, you have the right to complain to a supervisory authority such as
- The Information Commissioner's Office in the UK whose details can be found at www.ico.org.uk
- The Data Protection Commissioner in Ireland whose details can be found at www.dataprotection.ie
Kantar Media UK Limited is a company registered in England and Wales (Company No. 00275304) and its registered address is 222 Gray's Inn Road, London, England, WC1X 8HB