Privacy policy

This document outlines the principles of processing and protecting personal data of individuals visiting the website brandsemantics.eu, brandsemantics.pl, brandsemantics.de, brandsemantics.org (hereinafter referred to as the “Website”).

The administrator of your personal data in connection with the use of the Website is Brand Semantics Prosta Spółka Akcyjna based in Warsaw at ul.  Puławska 77, 02-595 Warsaw, KRS: 0001222755, NIP 5214154430 (hereinafter referred to as the “Company”).

For any matters related to the processing of personal data by the Website, you can contact us at: office@brandsemantics.eu.  

The rules for processing your data differ depending on whether you are an unauthenticated visitor to the Website or have established a relationship with us by subscribing to the newsletter. Therefore, for your convenience, we have divided this document into three parts:

Cookies and other technologies

Processing of personal data of individuals visiting the Website

Other situations of processing personal data – newsletter

If you are short on time, click on the link related to the part that interests you the most. If you have a little more time, we encourage you to read the entire text.

COOKIES AND OTHER TECHNOLOGIES

We use cookies and other similar mechanisms to understand how users interact with our Website and for marketing purposes, including displaying advertisements to them in other places on the Internet.

What are cookies?

A cookie is a small text file saved by a website on your computer, phone, or any other device. The cookie contains data about your usage of this site. 

By default, web browsers allow cookies to be stored on your device and external access to these files. Some cookies are essential for the operation of the Website. In other cases, upon your first visit to our Website, we ask you to consent to the installation of cookies.

How to manage cookie consents?

You can change your cookie settings at any time by modifying your web browser settings. You can also always return to the cookie consent management panel using the “Manage cookies” link visible in the footer of our Website. 

Blocking specific cookies by you, if you previously consented to them, will be considered a withdrawal of consent, and after the withdrawal of consent, we will stop processing your data in this regard.

Below you can read about the specific cookies we use and which companies may receive your data in this regard.

What cookies do we use?

A. Essential cookies

1. These cookies are necessary for the proper functioning of the site. Unfortunately, you cannot disable them, as disabling them will cause our Website to not function correctly.

2. For this purpose, we use our own tool and the “Cookie consent” file, which stores your privacy settings. It retains and reproduces your consent or lack thereof for the activation of specific types of cookies on our Website each time you visit it. 

3. Other essential cookies on our Website serve to ensure its proper functioning, e.g., for managing the activation of other tracking tools that you consent to. We also use the Cloudfare tool for the purpose of ensuring the security of the Website, including protection against various network attacks.

B. Statistical analysis of our Website

1. We use tools that collect statistical data, which allow us to understand how users interact with our Website. The data we receive from these tools do not provide us with information about specific individuals.

2. We use Google Analytics. The information collected by Google Analytics about users includes, for example: how many times a user visits the site; the date of the first and last visit; the duration of the visit; the page from which the user visited the site; the search engine used by the user; the link that was clicked; the location in the world from which the user accesses, etc.

3. Google assigns each user its own identifier (the so-called Google ID) and collects data obtained from cookies from various websites on its servers. We – as the owner of the Website – may receive reports (statistics) from Google related solely to traffic on our Website. These reports, of course, only include individuals who have consented to the recording of their visits by Google Analytics on our Website.

4. Further detailed information about how Google Analytics works can be found here and here.

5. You can also permanently prevent Google Analytics from recording information from your browser by installing a special plugin available here.

6. We also use the HotJar tool to collect statistical data, which helps us understand how users interact with our Website.  The information collected by HotJar about users includes, for example: click locations on the page, paths taken and user activity on the site, the type of browser used.

7. Further detailed information about how the HotJar tool works can be found here.

8. You can also permanently prevent HotJar from recording information from your browser by following the instructions available here.

9. For the purposes of Website analytics, we also use tools: (i) Inspectlet, which is used for anonymously studying user behavior on websites, known as heat maps (you can read more here) and (ii) Islaymetrics (you can read more here).

C. Email marketing

1. For the newsletter, we use a tool provided to us by an external company – MailChimp.

2. The email marketing system embeds cookies on our Website to display subscription forms, to save data from the subscription form, and to measure the effectiveness of these forms (conversion rate, i.e., the percentage of users who subscribed).

D. Google Ads – behavioural advertising and other Google tools

1. Google collects data obtained from placing cookies on your device on its servers and uses this information to display advertisements on other websites you visit. This data is collected on all websites where you have allowed the use of cookies (including our Website), as well as from ads you have clicked on. Typically, cookies from Google expire after 3 months.

2. As advertisers using Google services, we do not have access to data from cookies saved on your device, but we can target ads to selected audiences, e.g., to all individuals who visited our website (or a specific subpage) within the last 7 days.

3. This data serves only as statistical material for us, and we only place ads based on aggregated criteria (to specific target groups, not to specific users).

4. More about how Google uses cookies to display ads and how you can manage your ad settings can be read  here.

5. We also use Google Marketing Platform tools, which allow us to measure the effectiveness of advertising campaigns carried out through Google Ads and analyse their results.

E. Meta conversion pixel (Facebook and Instagram)

1. We use the so-called “conversion pixel” (remarketing pixel) from Meta to manage ads on Facebook and Instagram.

2. If you consent to the use of this cookie on our Website, then through this tool, Meta Platforms obtains information that you visited our Website. This information is assigned to your profile on the respective service, if you have one. If you are not a user of these services, then the information is assigned to a so-called “Facebook ID” created for you.

3. This allows us to target ads on Facebook and Instagram to those individuals who have already visited our Website or specific subpages (remarketing). We then receive only statistical data from Meta Platforms regarding the effectiveness of the ads (e.g., how many people saw our ad, how many clicked on it), without reference to specific users.

4. If you have an account on Facebook or Instagram, we encourage you to read further information about data protection on these services here  and here.

5. You can read more about the Meta remarketing pixel here.

F. Social media

1. We have placed links to our profiles on social media on our Website: Facebook / Linkedin / X. If you visit our profile on a given service, the owner of that service will receive – just as with users transitioning from any other website to another website – information that you arrived at these services from our Website.

2. Details regarding data processing by these social services can be found on the providers' pages of these services:

• Facebook and Instagram – https://www.facebook.com/privacy/center/

• Linkedin – https://pl.linkedin.com/legal/privacy-policy

• X - https://x.com/en/privacy

3. We also use marketing tools provided by the aforementioned social services, as well as TikTok. These tools allow us to target ads in social media to those individuals who have already visited our Website or specific subpages (remarketing). We then receive only statistical data from the owners of the aforementioned services regarding the effectiveness of the ads (e.g., how many people saw our ad, how many clicked on it), without reference to specific users.

G. Videos

1. Some videos on the Website are embedded using plugins from YouTube (a service owned by Google). When you play such a video on our Website, Google receives information about this from your browser, even if you do not have a Google/YouTube profile or are not currently logged in. If you have previously logged into the aforementioned service, this provider will be able to directly associate the video playback with your profile.

2. If you want to prevent Google from collecting information about your activity on our Website, you can:

• not play the video (we will inform you about this before each video playback if you have not previously consented to cookies from YouTube on the Website. Consent to play the video will be treated as consent regarding other videos on our Website – until you withdraw it, i.e., change your cookie choices),

• not consent to cookies from this service on our Website,

•  or you can log out of this service.

3. More information about data processing by YouTube can be found here.

H. OpenAI advertising (ChatGPT Ads) – measurement pixel

1. We advertise in ChatGPT (OpenAI Ads) and use the OpenAI measurement pixel. It is a tool provided by OpenAI which passes on the information that, after seeing or clicking one of our advertisements, you performed a particular action on our Website. We use it for two purposes, matching the two parts of our Website:

• on brandsemantics.org – to establish which advertisements actually bring participants to our training courses, webinars, conferences and other events we organise, including to the pages of individual events and to the start and the completion of registration;

• on brandsemantics.eu, brandsemantics.pl and brandsemantics.de – to establish which advertisements lead to people reviewing our advisory, analytical and training services relating to brand visibility in artificial intelligence systems (GEO/LLMO), including our service descriptions, blog articles and case studies, and to sending us an enquiry through the contact form.

2. A separate measurement identifier is assigned to each of these parts of the Website, so that data from brandsemantics.org and data from brandsemantics.eu, brandsemantics.pl and brandsemantics.de are not combined with one another. We are rolling this tool out across these services in stages. You will always find the current list of tools operating on the service you are visiting in the privacy settings on this page – a tool that is not listed there is not used on that service.

3. The tool operates only if you consent to it in the privacy settings (the „OpenAI Ads” item). Until you give consent, the OpenAI script is not downloaded or executed at all, we send no requests to OpenAI, and we store no identifiers belonging to this tool on your device.

4. If you arrive at our Website from an advertisement, the page address may contain an „oppref” parameter – the advertisement click identifier. Once you have given consent, the OpenAI tool stores two first-party cookies on your device:

a) „__oppref” – the advertisement click identifier, stored for 30 days; it allows your subsequent visits within that period to be linked to the same advertisement click;

b) „__obref” – a browser identifier generated by the OpenAI tool, stored for 365 days; it allows the same browser to be recognised on subsequent visits, whether or not you reached us from an advertisement.

Neither identifier contains your first name, surname, e-mail address or telephone number. When consent is withdrawn, the OpenAI tool itself deletes the „__oppref” cookie; the „__obref” cookie remains on your device until it expires or until you delete it in your browser settings – see section „I. Withdrawal of consent”.

5. The events our own code sends to OpenAI are: opening a page, viewing an event page or an item of content, starting registration (clicking the sign-up button), completing registration for a training course or a webinar, and sending a message through the contact form. With each event our code passes: the event identifier (used so that a single action is not counted twice), the event category required by OpenAI and – for a content view and for the start of registration – the identifier of the event or content that the event concerns. We do not send the content of your message, your e-mail address or your telephone number.

Irrespective of what our code sends, the OpenAI tool itself attaches to every event it sends:

a) the full address of the page being visited together with every parameter contained in that address – including campaign parameters (for example „utm_source”) and the „oppref” click identifier – and the address of the page you came to us from;

b) the identifier of the pixel assigned to the given service; it is from this that it follows which of our services the event concerns. Our code does not send any separate designation of the service or of the language of the page – the language follows from the page address referred to in point a);

c) the identifiers stored in the cookies described in paragraph 4, and a timestamp;

d) the data described in paragraph 6, if the tool detects it.

The OpenAI tool also sends its own technical events, which are not triggered by any action of yours on our Website: a tool initialisation event on every page load, and diagnostic events concerning its configuration and the state of consent.

6. Automatic advanced matching. We are telling you plainly how the OpenAI tool itself works – irrespective of what our own code sends. Once you have given consent and the script has loaded, the OpenAI tool itself listens to your interactions with the page (typing text, clicks, selecting a value in a field, submitting a form) and in doing so reads form fields together with their contents, as well as technical data that the page makes available to analytics tools. The data detected in this way is attached by the tool to the events it sends, in two different ways:

a) e-mail address, telephone number, first name and surname – transformed in your browser using the one-way SHA-256 hash function, that is, as an irreversible hash;

b) country, city, region and postal code – in raw form, without being transformed by a hash function.

We draw your attention to three points: (i) hashed data is still personal data – hashing is not anonymisation; (ii) the hash transformation covers the identifying data listed in point a) but does not cover the location data listed in point b); (iii) the switch for this function is held by OpenAI alone – for our pixel it is switched on at OpenAI’s end, and OpenAI can switch it on or off without any change on our side. That is why the only real safeguard available to us is not to load this script until you have given consent – and that is exactly how it works here.

7. The recipient of the data sent by this tool is OpenAI Ireland Limited, 1st Floor, The Liffey Trust Centre, 117–126 Sheriff Street Upper, Dublin 1, D01 YC43, Ireland – the entity responsible for OpenAI services in the European Economic Area. Data may be transferred to entities of the OpenAI group established outside the European Economic Area, including in the United States. OpenAI states that it bases such transfers on the standard contractual clauses approved by the European Commission (Article 46(2)(c) GDPR).

8. We do not store the events sent to OpenAI ourselves – they travel directly from your browser to OpenAI. The period for which OpenAI retains that data is governed by the OpenAI privacy terms. The „attribution window” used in our advertising panel (30 days from the click) indicates how long after clicking an advertisement your registration for a training course will still be attributed to that advertisement – it is a reporting parameter, not a data retention period. The retention periods for identifiers on your device are set by the cookies described in paragraph 4: „__oppref” – 30 days, „__obref” – 365 days.

9. The legal basis is your consent (Article 6(1)(a) GDPR). You may withdraw it at any time – see section „I. Withdrawal of consent”. You can read more about the OpenAI privacy terms here, and about the measurement pixel itself here.

I. Withdrawal of consent – how to do it and where its limits lie

1. At any time you can open the privacy settings on our Website and untick any individual tool or all of them at once. Withdrawing consent is just as easy as giving it and does not require you to contact us.

2. From the moment the change is saved, our Website stops sending any new events to the provider concerned. This happens immediately, on the page you have open, without any need to reload it. In addition, we pass the provider its own notification that consent has been revoked.

3. Honestly, about what withdrawal of consent does not undo:

a) A request that has already been sent cannot be withdrawn. Withdrawal takes effect for the future.

b) In the case of Meta, the revocation provided for by the provider works as a hold rather than a stop: events directed at a held pixel may be queued by it and sent later if you consent again. That is precisely why we do not rely on that mechanism – once consent is withdrawn, our own code simply stops sending anything to Meta.

c) In the case of Google, setting the „denied” state suspends the use of cookies but, according to Google documentation, need not mean a complete absence of communication with Google servers – cookieless signals are provided for in that state.

d) Cookies already stored on your device remain there until they expire or until you delete them in your browser settings. The exception is the „__oppref” cookie, which the OpenAI tool deletes itself at the moment consent is withdrawn.

e) The brandsemantics.org service is generated statically. Switching a given tool off on our side there requires the site to be rebuilt and published again, so it is not an instant off switch for pages that have already been built or for tabs you currently have open. Your own withdrawal of consent in the privacy settings, by contrast, takes effect immediately – see point 2.

4. Withdrawal of consent does not affect the lawfulness of processing carried out on the basis of consent before its withdrawal (Article 7(3) GDPR).

5. Withdrawing consent to marketing cookies does not restrict your ability to use the Website, including the contact form.

Legal issues regarding cookies

The legal basis for our use of essential cookies (indicated above under letter A) is our legitimate interest, i.e., the right to operate a Website that supports our business, and the necessity to maintain its security. The legal basis for our use of other cookies is your consent.

In connection with the processing of your personal data through cookies, you have rights at any time, which we describe below in the section “Your rights regarding the processing of your data by the Website.”

Our use of cookies, particularly for the purposes of behavioural advertising, may involve so-called profiling. This means that we or marketing companies whose services we use may create a user profile based on the collected information (e.g., email address, order history, the page from which the user accessed the Store) and based on this formulate purchasing forecasts for the future. This allows us to make decisions about what content (including ads) to display on our and other websites.

PROCESSING OF PERSONAL DATA OF INDIVIDUALS VISITING THE WEBSITE

What data do we process and for what purposes?

In connection with your use of the Website, we will process the following data:

Providing the above data by you is not mandatory, but it is necessary to contact you via email and/or phone to respond to your inquiry. Providing data for marketing purposes (newsletter) is always voluntary.

How long do we process data?

We will process data for the time necessary to achieve the purposes listed above in the table (i.e., until our legitimate interest allowing us to process ceases, or until you withdraw the given marketing consent). Further processing will only be possible if we have a legal obligation as the administrator.

In addition to processing customer data for the time necessary to achieve the purposes listed above in the table, we will then store it appropriately recorded and protected for such a period during which our liability could arise from entering into any legal relationship with you. After the expiration of any claims, depending on each case, we will proceed to delete personal data.

Whom do we share your data with?

In our operations, we use the services of other cooperating companies, so your data may be entrusted to us: the hosting provider of our Website, the hosting provider of our email, the provider of the email marketing system, and other companies whose services and marketing tools we use.

For the marketing activities described above in the “Cookies” section, we use services provided by entities based in the USA (Google). As a result, personal data may be transferred to third countries that are not members of the European Union. The appropriate level of protection for your data is ensured by the Data Privacy Framework program, which you can read more about here. 

In addition to Google indicated above, we also use the services of entities which may transfer personal data outside the European Economic Area in the following respects: Meta Platforms – in connection with the Meta conversion pixel described above under letter E – and OpenAI Ireland Limited, established in Ireland, in connection with the measurement pixel described above under letter H. OpenAI Ireland Limited may transfer data to entities of its group in the United States and states that it bases such transfers on the standard contractual clauses approved by the European Commission (Article 46(2)(c) GDPR).

Your rights regarding the processing of your data by the Website

We are committed to respecting the confidentiality of your personal data and ensuring that you can exercise your rights. You can exercise your rights at no cost by sending us an email or contacting us in another way.

Remember that in connection with the processing of your data, you have the right to:

• request access to the data we hold about you;

• rectify your data;

• delete your data if they are no longer necessary for the purposes for which they were processed, or we have no other legal basis for processing them;

• restrict the processing of data;

• request the transfer of your personal data;

• lodge a complaint with the President of the Personal Data Protection Office if you believe that your data is being processed unlawfully by us.

OTHER SITUATIONS OF PROCESSING PERSONAL DATA – NEWSLETTER

Additional information for newsletter subscribers

1. Regardless of whether you are our client or partner, you can voluntarily provide us with your personal data if you subscribe to our newsletter. If you have subscribed to our newsletter, we will send you marketing information regarding our services, e.g., about new offerings, special promotions, or training materials we have prepared.

2. The basis for processing your data in this case is our legitimate interest arising from your marketing consent.

3. For the purpose of sending you the newsletter, your data (email address, email open history) will be entrusted to the company providing email marketing services.

4. We will process your data for as long as you do not withdraw your consent, noting that in the case of the newsletter, we may remove your address from our database (with prior notice) if you have not opened any messages from us for more than 18 months.

5. In connection with the processing of your personal data for newsletter purposes, you have the same rights at any time as described above in the section “Your rights regarding the processing of your data by the Website.”

6. You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link found in every  newsletter.

7. The modern email marketing system allows us to analyze recipient actions, i.e., it provides us with information on whether a given message has been opened by you. We analyze such information to better tailor the content of the newsletter to your interests and send you personalized messages (profiling). You can object to such processing of your data by us at any time.

8. Your data is not used by us to make decisions based on automated data processing that could affect your legal situation or have other similarly significant effects on you. 

9. Further legal information about the rules for sending our newsletter can be found in the Newsletter Regulations.