Privacy
Last updated 21 September 2026
Scout is an advertising measurement service. Advertisers use it to run ads on the publisher sites we work with and to find out what those ads did. This page explains what Scout records about the people who see those ads, why, and how to stop it.
Scout is operated by the team behind Marksman.tv. If you are an advertiser using Scout, the agreement you signed governs your account data; this page is about the visitors your ads reach.
What Scout does not do
Scout’s measurement tags are deliberately narrow. Specifically, they do not:
- Fingerprint your device. Scout does not read canvas, WebGL or audio signatures, installed fonts or plugins, screen dimensions, CPU or GPU characteristics, or battery status, and does not attempt to identify you by combining such characteristics.
- Collect your name, address, or payment details. If an advertiser sends an email address or phone number with an order, it is hashed in your browser first and Scout never receives the original.
- Sell your personal information, or share it with data brokers or advertising exchanges.
- Track you across the open web. Scout records activity on the publisher surfaces it serves ads onto and on the sites of advertisers who have installed its tag. Nowhere else.
- Build profiles for anyone but the advertiser concerned. An advertiser sees activity relating to their own ads and their own site, never another advertiser’s.
- Show you pop-ups, redirect you off an advertiser’s page, or alter the page you are on. When you click a Scout click-tracking link it records the click and forwards you to the advertiser’s landing page, and that is the only redirect involved.
What Scout records
| What | Fields | Why | When |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ad impressions and clicks | The ad shown, a one-way hash of your IP address, your browser's user-agent string, device type, approximate location, the referring page, and a timestamp. | To tell an advertiser how their ad performed, and to bill for it. | Recorded when an ad is served on a publisher site or clicked. |
| Page views on an advertiser's own site | The page URL, the referring page, a visitor reference, and a one-way hash of your IP address. | To connect an ad you saw or clicked to what you did on the advertiser's site afterwards. | Recorded only on sites that have installed Scout's tag, and — unless that advertiser has enabled site-wide measurement — only if you arrived from a Scout-served ad. |
| Orders | An order reference, order total, item count, the line items the advertiser chooses to send, and, if the advertiser sends them, your email address and phone number hashed in your own browser before transmission. | To report which advertising preceded a sale. | Recorded at checkout on an advertiser's site. |
| Video engagement | Starts, progress milestones, completions, and clicks on a video ad. | To report how far viewers watched a video ad. | Recorded when a video ad plays on a publisher site. |
| Identifiers | A randomly generated visitor reference (scout_vid) and a click reference (scout_cid). Neither contains your name, email address, or any information about you — they are random values used to join events together. | To recognise that several events came from the same browser. | Stored by your browser on the advertiser's own site, and as a cookie on scoutdsp.com. |
About IP addresses
Scout stores a SHA-256 hash of your IP address rather than the address itself, and uses it only to recognise that two events probably came from the same network. We want to be straightforward about the limits of that: a hash of an IP address is not anonymous. The range of possible IPv4 addresses is small enough that anyone holding both the hash and enough computing power could work backwards to the original, so we treat these hashes as personal data and so should you.
About location
Approximate location is derived from your IP address by our hosting provider and can include country, region, city, postal code, and an approximate latitude and longitude. It is not read from your device’s GPS, and Scout never asks your browser for precise location.
Cookies and similar storage
scout_vid— a random visitor reference, kept for 180 days. Set on the advertiser’s own site and on scoutdsp.com.scout_cid— a reference to a specific ad click, kept for 30 days in your browser’s local storage on the advertiser’s site.scout_optout— records that you have opted out. It contains the single character1and nothing else, and is kept for five years because an opt-out that quietly expires is worse than none.
How long it is kept
Event records are retained while the advertising they describe is still being reported on, and aggregate figures (daily totals, with no identifiers) are kept indefinitely. Visitor references are purged after 180 days without activity. If you opt out, the identifying fields on your visitor record are erased immediately and the links joining your activity together are severed.
Your choices
Opt out of Scout measurement. That page explains exactly what the opt-out can and cannot reach, including the cases where your browser will not let it work and what to do instead.
Scout honours the Global Privacy Control signal automatically. If your browser or an extension sends it, Scout records nothing about you and you need take no further action.
Depending on where you live you may have the right to ask what personal data we hold about you, to have it corrected, or to have it deleted. In practice Scout holds no name or address to look you up by, so a request is most likely to succeed if you can supply your visitor reference — the scout_vid value — from the site you were on. Write to info@scoutdsp.com and we will respond within 30 days.
Children
Scout’s services are not directed to children, and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 13.
Changes
If what Scout collects changes, this page changes with it and the date at the top is updated. Material changes will be noted here rather than made silently.
Contact
Questions about this policy, or about a specific ad or measurement tag you have seen, go to info@scoutdsp.com. Security reports are welcome at the same address.