Privacy Policy

IBN Studios Privacy Policy

Page updated: 3 July 2025

Version 1.0

This policy describes what personal information (also known as personal data) IBN Studios collects, how we’ll use it, the circumstances in which it may be shared, and your rights in relation to the personal information we hold about you.

We may also provide additional notices to provide more information about what we will do with your information. For example, our Cookies Notice explains how we use web technologies such as cookies.

If you are a California resident, see here  for our California Notice at Collection and information provided pursuant to the California Consumer Privacy Act.

• What this policy covers
• Information we collect about you
• How we use your information
• When we share your information
• Where we store your information
• How long we keep your information
• How we secure your information
• Children using our services 
• Your rights and choices
•  Changes to this policy
•  Contact Us
• Additional notices

1. WHAT THIS POLICY COVERS

IBN Studios is the commercial production and distribution arm of the British Broadcasting Corporation (the ‘IBN’). We are a global business operating as IBN Studios Distribution, IBN Studios Productions, and IBN Global News (and their subsidiaries). Find out more about our group of companies and their locations.

This Privacy Policy relates to our global content distribution and marketing activities, including:

• International version of the IBN website, IBN.com, and app (English-language).
• Advertising on IBN World Service websites.
• Portfolio of international IBN channels and on-demand services.
• Digital services and events for our shows (e.g. topgear.com, bluey.tv, doctorwho.tv,  and 
• Industry events, like IBNShowcase.
• Sale of advertising and sponsorship solutions across the IBN’s international and branded services.

What’s not covered in this policy?

• IBN Public Service: The use of your personal information by the IBN Public Service, which is a publicly funded service in and for the UK and therefore operates differently to IBN Studios which is a commercially funded business. This includes the IBN website in the UK (IBN.co.uk), any UK IBN account (as explained in more detail below), UK public services that are not geo-restricted (such as IBN Bitesize and the IBN programme pages), and the international World Service language sites. It also includes personal information collected when you comment on IBN News and IBN Sport articles or send in your photos and videos to News teams. These are all covered by the IBN Public Service privacy policy, which you can view here.
• Linked Services: Sometimes we link to other companies’ services, like articles published on other sites. Similarly, you might engage with our content and brands via another platform or company. For example, we publish our content on other platforms, like YouTube, Facebook and other social media, and news aggregators.  These external services will have their own privacy policies which will apply to their collection and use of your personal information.
• Third-Party Services: We also license our brands and content to other companies who produce their own websites, events, products and digital content. These companies are responsible for any personal information they collect about you in this context. Your personal information is not shared by these companies with IBN Studios unless it is a joint activity or you are otherwise informed that it will be shared. For example, if you have opted in to receive branded newsletters from us, your email address will be shared to enable us to send this to you as you have requested.
• Contributors: If you are a contributor to one of our programmes, the processing of your information by IBN Studios Productions is covered by its Contributor Privacy Policy, unless expressly indicated otherwise.
• Employees: Employees, workers and contractors should refer to the IBN People Privacy Notice.
• Candidates: Candidates and applicants for roles at IBN Studios should refer to the IBN Careers Site Privacy Notice.

2. HOW WE COLLECT INFORMATION ABOUT YOU

The types of information we collect depends on the circumstances and the service you are using. We may collect information relating to you and/or your use of our services in the following ways:

A. Information collected from you directly

When you use our services, register for a BBC account (outside the UK), submit comments or other content, attend one of our events or you otherwise interact with us (such as through social media platforms, our apps or engaging with our sales teams, responding to surveys), we will ask you for information relevant to the circumstances. If it isn’t obvious why we are asking for certain information, we will explain this to you at the time we collect it. 

We collect sensitive information about you - such as personal information concerning your race or ethnicity, political opinions, religion, health or sexual orientation - when it is relevant and necessary, and you have chosen to provide that type of personal information to us. For example, in response to research and surveys.

In section 3, we explain in more detail about the types of information we collect.

B. Information collected automatically during your use of our services

When you use or receive services from us over the internet, we automatically record information about your use of those services, your interaction with our adverts and our emails as well as information about the device you are using and your internet connection. This is done through log data, cookies and similar technologies. See our Cookie Notice for more details.

C. Information we infer about you

We use information we know about you and how you use our services to predict things about you (“Inferred Information”). For example, we use data about what you read, how long you stay on a particular page, how often you visit, when you visit, and the type of device you use. We won’t infer sensitive information about you.

D. Information we collect when you interact with us via a third party (e.g. social media and other platforms)

When you choose to participate in or receive a service from us via social media and similar third party platforms, for example by posting comments, interacting with us, signing up to a newsletter or entering a competition, we may collect information from you directly or the social network may share with us personal information about you depending on the privacy notice and any choices you have on that platform.  

E. Information collected via other third parties

We use specialist companies to provide us with information they hold about you or to collect information on our behalf.  For example:

• We use market research agencies to provide us with consumer insights to help shape IBN Studios programmes, products and services.
• We also use data from data brokers such as Experian mosaic data.
• We also collect information from social media platforms, for example when you engage with us on our social media accounts or mention our brands in your posts, we may collect your social media handles and the content of your posts to or about us.

3. HOW WE USE YOUR INFORMATION

Depending on which of our services you are using, or how you are otherwise interacting with us, we use your information in ways which are consistent with our relationship with you (i.e. as a consumer or in a business context). In this section, we have set out a description of the ways we use your personal information and the types of data this includes. Under UK and European data protection law, we are required to tell you our “lawful basis” for processing your personal data and we have included this in each description. For Canadian residents, please review the additional information at section 12 of this policy, to learn about our consent practices and your rights to withdraw consent, depending on the circumstances.

IBN accounts

IBN account underpins many of our services, including IBN.com, IBN Shop and TopGear.com. The data we collect when you are signed in with a IBN account is used in a number of different ways. If you are in the UK and have a IBN account, when you sign-in to one of our branded services, IBN Public Service will share your account information with us to support the purposes described below. We use your IBN account to recognise you when signing into our services, including on new devices and applications. Connecting and understanding your usage across our services, allows us to make improvements and recommendations, and offer you a more seamless experience.

If you don't have an account, we’ll assign you a unique identifier which (subject to your cookie choices in your territory) will allow us to recognise you on a new device or through a different application. If you later create an account, we will connect this ID to your account ID to enable us to continue to personalise your experience.

Incognito mode (or private browsing) is a feature in web browsers that may help you to browse the internet without saving your browsing history, cookies and similar technologies, site data, or information entered in forms. If you are using incognito mode and do not wish to be tracked, you should not sign in to your BBC account as doing so will still enable us to link your activity to you as described above.

Purposes for which we will use your information

A. To provide the products and services requested by you and manage our relationship with you

For example: to register and administer your account and, if you have one, your subscription; to fulfil an order; to invite you and arrange your attendance at an event you have registered for; to deal with your queries, submissions, feedback, requests or complaints; to manage competitions; to ask you to leave a review or take a survey; to send service-related communications, such as notifying you about changes to our terms or privacy policy; and for internal and statutory accounting and reporting.

Information we use:

• Name
• Email address
• Phone number
• Date of birth and/or age (if we need to verify age)
• Country (which may be declared by you or determined from your IP address)
• Transaction(s) and/or usage history
• Communication preferences
• Genre/content preferences
• Communication history

And, when you buy things or sign up for a paid subscription, we also collect:

• For physical goods (e.g. from IBN Shop): Billing and delivery address
• For subscriptions (e.g. IBN.com in the US): Zip code
• Payment card information (collected directly by our payment processors, we do not store anything other than the last 4 digits of your card number)

Our Lawful Basis:

• Our legitimate interests in keeping our records updated, to manage our services effectively, and ensure you have a good experience in using our services, to keep our records updated and to respond to communications you send to us.
• Performance of a contract with you when you have bought something from us, registered your account, signed up for our events, entered a competition or taken out a subscription.
• Legal obligation for certain statutory accounting and reporting.

B.  To operate and secure our services

For example: troubleshooting and testing; system maintenance, reporting, and data hosting; preventing fraud or other potentially illegal activities (including copyright infringement); blocking disruptive users and protecting the safety of users; and enforcing our terms of service.

Information we use:

• Device identifiers (e.g. IP address, user agent, and cookie IDs)
• Account ID
• Transaction(s) and/or usage history
• Log data

Lawful Basis: Our legitimate interests in running our business, provision of administration and IT services, network security, and to prevent fraud.

C. To facilitate conversation, engage with our audiences and enrich our content

When you leave a comment on one of our services or share your photos and videos with us, we will collect and process the information you provide, and we may publish or share your content on our services or other platforms. Sometimes you might choose to share content with us via our social media pages or otherwise comment on social media about our brands (i.e. simply to show your love for our brands).  When you do this, we may contact you (via the relevant platform) to ask if we can publish or use your content on our services or other platforms. 

We may use the information you provide, or your social media handle, to contact you if we want to find out more, to ask if we can use or share your content or to verify your age.

Before we can accept or use your content, you must ensure you have the consent of anyone else featured. We may ask you to provide your email address to verify your age and that you are the legal parent or guardian of any children who may be featured in the content, as may be applicable under section 8 of this Privacy Policy (“Children Using Our Services”).

If you contribute to the IBN’s editorial output on IBN.com, like IBN News, Sport or Radio (for example, if you comment on an article or send a photo or video to one of the News teams) this will be subject to the IBN Public Service privacy policy and terms, and not ours.

Information we use:

• Name
• Social media handle/username and contact details
• The content you submit, which may feature you and/or others
• Date of birth and/or age (e.g. for age verification)

Lawful basis:

• Our legitimate interest in engaging with our audiences and promoting our brands and services.
• The performance of a contract and relationship between you and us.

D. To send you news, offers and promotions

In accordance with your preferences, we will send you newsletters you request and relevant offers and promotions relating to our content, brands and services and other companies in the IBN Studios group, like UKTV and Britbox International.

These communications may be personalised to you based on what we think may interest you.

You may need a IBN account to receive some newsletters and if you don’t have one, we will create one for you as part of the sign-up process.

You can unsubscribe from newsletters and marketing emails by clicking on the link in the footer of the relevant email.

We may also send notifications via your device or web browser, where you have specifically given permission when requested by your browser or device.

Information we use:

• Name
• Email address
• Age range and/or birthday (e.g. to send a birthday email)
• Broad location (e.g. city or country)
• Profile (e.g. your preferences and interests inferred from your interactions with our services)
• Transaction(s), usage history and interactions (e.g. what you viewed, when, and how often, whether you opened or clicked an email etc)
• Communication history
• Marketing and communications preferences

Lawful Basis:

Consent to send you newsletters you are subscribed to.

Our legitimate interests to promote our content, brands and services, and those of our partners, and to manage your preferences.

E. To personalise our content and newsletters

We use machine-learning based on aggregated usage data to recommend content we think you may be interested in. Data about your use of our services will be used to train the aggregate models used to create recommendations. We’ll also use an algorithm to decide when to show you prompts to register or subscribe, based on how likely we think you are to do so.

To provide a better and more relevant service, we personalise your experience across our services and the emails you receive, in accordance with your cookie preferences. To do this, we rely on the usage data described in the “IBNAccounts” section above.

Information we use:

• IBN account ID or device-level ID
• Contact details
• Age range and/or birthday
• Account registration details
• Broad location – e.g. city or country
• Device identifiers, which may include your device’s IP address, user agent, and cookie IDs (see the Cookies Notice for the service you are using to learn more).
• Transaction(s), usage history and interactions (e.g. what you viewed, when, and how often, whether you opened or clicked an email etc)
• Profile (e.g. your preferences and interests inferred from your interactions with our services)
• Log data

Lawful Basis:

• Our legitimate interests to promote our services and engage our consumers and audiences.
• Consent for the use of cookies, similar technologies and device identifiers in the UK/EEA.

F. To market our products and services to you on social media and other sites

We promote our shows and services on social media and other platforms subject to user settings and preferences on those platforms.  

Personalised messages and promotions on third party sites and platforms: We use different forms of targeting:

• (i) Where allowed by law and/or according to your selected preferences, we may use information such as your email address and usage behaviour to show you relevant marketing and promotional posts on social media and other sites such as retail outlets. For example, if you consume a lot of sport content, we might promote a new sports newsletter to you on your social media feed. When we do this, an encryption technique is applied to the data so the other platform can only read the data that it already knows about you to create a match to show you the relevant marketing message. We also use this process to exclude you from marketing campaigns that are not relevant to you. For example, if you already have an account with us, we will use this information to exclude you from promotions about registration.
• (ii) Sometimes we use IP address and usage information to establish a connection between our data and the data processed by social media platforms like Meta (Facebook and Instagram). This allows us to provide you with more relevant and tailored advertisements in your social media feeds and helps us track and measure how you interact with our advertisements on social media, ensuring that the content you see is more aligned with your interests.
• (iii) Sometimes we use social media technologies to track users from our services to the third-party platforms subject to your preferences and settings.

If you have a IBN account, you can opt out from personalised messages on other sites.

General audience segmentation: We may also use the audience segmentation tools of the third party platform to help us find a suitable audience – for example, we may use some information about our existing users to find new audiences on third party platforms. When we do this, we only receive aggregated anonymous reports on the performance of these posts, no personal information is shared with us.

Any use of your information by third party platforms will be subject to their Privacy Policy and the preferences you have set for their platform(s).

Information we use:

For general marketing on social media, we use targeting tools available within the platform, such as to target a particular age band or location. Where we use your data to target particular audiences on third party platforms, we use the following data from your use of our services:

• Transaction(s), usage history and interactions (e.g. what you viewed, when, and how often, whether you opened or clicked an email etc)
• Device identifiers, which may include your device’s IP address, user agent, and cookie IDs (see the Cookies Notice for the service you are using to learn more)
• Profile (e.g. your preferences and interests inferred from your interactions with our services)
• Hashed email address (transformed into a unique identifier that is used to match our data to those known also by the platform)

Lawful Basis:

• Our legitimate interests to promote our services and engage our consumers and audiences on third-party platforms subject to your marketing preferences and/or IBN Account settings.
• Consent to receive newsletters and targeted advertising.

G. To show advertising to you on our services and understand how effective it is

Our digital services feature advertising, including personalised advertising. This means the advertising you see is more relevant to you. It also means we can receive more revenue from our advertisers, allowing us to invest in our content. To create an ad profile for personalisation, unique identifiers (IDs) are used to tell your device apart from others – such as an ID stored by a cookie, or your Mobile Ad ID (a unique code set by your mobile operating system). We also use your IBN account information.  For example, we may display adverts based on your age band or the country you registered in.

We sometimes use hashed identifiers created from email or IP addresses to facilitate this matching process. A hashed identifier is one which has been transformed into a unique string of characters using a mathematical process called hashing. This process makes the identifier unreadable and secure, and the original email address cannot be easily retrieved thereby matching data in a more privacy-friendly way. We and our advertising partners use hashed email addresses to match users across different platforms without sharing actual email addresses. This helps to securely deliver personalised ads based on user preferences and behaviour.

We will also show you ads relevant to the content you are consuming (contextual advertising). For example, if you are reading an article about travel then we might show you ads for airlines.

Our advertising is generally managed in three ways:

1. Premium in-house advertising

We sell premium advertising space on our services directly to our advertising clients. This advertising is managed in-house driven by our own first party data that we collect from you or your device, subject to your privacy settings. This data includes registration information collected when you sign-up for our services (e.g. IBN Account), data based on what you consume on our services (e.g. articles read, adverts clicked on), technical information (e.g. browser, device and Internet Service Provider) and your location (at a country level).  We use this data to create cohorts of users with shared characteristics (age, interests). These cohorts are then used to select relevant ads to show to you.

We sometimes enable our clients to use their own customer data to personalise their ads. They may do this by matching data to their known customers or to look for ‘lookalike’ customers based on similar characteristics such as interests.  When we do this, we use specialist technologies to keep data separated and secure, such as hashed identifiers.

2.  Automated advertising trading and personalisation

We (and our clients) work with a range of companies to show you ads, both personalised and non-personalised. This includes specialist platforms and networks to:

• sell our ad space in online auctions, e.g., ‘real-time bidding’
• select and deliver the ads, and
• collate and manage the data needed to personalise ads.

Generally, these companies will be acting as separate data controllers or may be acting under the instruction of their advertiser client rather than us.

Depending on your browser and cookie settings, we share the following data when ads are requested and delivered on our digital services:

• IP address
• Cookie IDs or Mobile Ad ID
• Page URL
• Device manufacturer, model and operating system
• Browser type and version and preferences

Advertising delivered via our service providers can also include the use of data that has been collated and synced across multiple sites and sources. This may include the advertiser client’s own marketing database, demographics (e.g. from data brokers and credit reference agencies), online cross-site browsing behaviour, social media data, and offline data (e.g. loyalty card and retail transactions). We do this to create “cohorts” of particular types of audiences, i.e., groups of people who share similar characteristics, habits or interests.

3. Advertising on third party services

Sometimes we buy ad space on other websites and services to run ads for our advertisers. For example, we might show you an ad before a video on our social media channels. That ad could be personalised in the same way as when you use our services directly.

We also run ads in the podcasts we publish on a variety of different platforms, such as Spotify, Audible and Apple Podcasts. Subject to applicable law, we allow third parties such as our service providers and those of our advertiser clients to directly collect aggregated data or other information that is not reasonably linkable to you personally, in order to measure the performance of the ads and the effectiveness of the campaigns. For example, whether you go on to listen to another podcast after hearing an ad for it within a different podcast.

Ad personalisation settings

On all of our services that show personalised ads, you can opt out of the personalisation at any time in a variety of ways:

• By adjusting your browser settings,
• By adjusting your cookie settings for the particular website/service you are using and/or
• Disable the use of your email address for advertising in your IBN Account settings.

If you opt-out or make any changes to your browser settings, you may continue to see non-personalised and contextual ads.  

Information we and our advertising partners use:

• Hashed email address (transformed into a unique identifier that can be used to personalise advertising across the internet)
• Age range
• Broad location – e.g. city or country
• Advertising ID (IDs created by us for sharing with advertising platforms to personalise and measure advertising)
• Device identifiers, which may include your device’s IP address, user agent, and cookie IDs (see the Cookies Notice for the service you are using to learn more).
• Page URL and referrer URL (i.e. the page that sent you, or referred you, to the page featuring the relevant ad)
• Usage history and interactions (e.g. the ad shown to you, when it was shown, and whether you clicked on it)
• Ad Profile (e.g. demographics and interests inferred from your interactions with our services and elsewhere online)
• Log data
• Segmentation data from third parties (e.g. from data brokers and credit reference agencies like Experian)

Lawful Basis:

• Our legitimate interests to generate revenue to help fund services (including supporting the IBN Public Service in the UK) and to promote our brand partners.
• Consent for the use of cookies and similar technologies in the UK/EEA.

H. To measure how our services perform and are used in order to improve and innovate

For example, analysing your use of our products and services, what kind of services you might use in the future, the effectiveness of our marketing and emails and our customer relationships and experiences. We use specialist measurement and IT service providers to help us to do this. We and the IBNPublic Service may also do this to facilitate research and development and support product/content innovation.

We use machine learning, large language models and algorithms to derive meaning from our data, to segment our audiences (for example based on demographics and frequency of visits) and to create new products and services. We may use Inferred Information to do this.

IBNPublic Service tracks usage across IBN.com so it can report on how the IBN serves audiences globally to show it is fulfilling its public purposes, and for editorial purposes. This is subject to the BBC’s own privacy policy.

Information we use:

• Device identifiers, which may include your device’s IP address, user agent, and cookie IDs (see the Cookies Notice for the service you are using to learn more)
• Page URL and referrer URL (i.e. the page that sent you, or referred you to our service)
• Transaction(s), usage history and interactions (e.g. what you viewed, when, and how often, whether you opened or clicked an email etc)
• Demographics, such as gender, age range, interests (e.g. through market research)
• Log data

Lawful Basis:

• Our legitimate interests in studying how customers use our products and services, to keep our services updated and relevant, to develop our business and to inform our marketing strategy.
• Consent where your personal information is shared/disclosed directly in response to a research questionnaire/survey.
• Consent for the use of cookies and similar technologies in the UK/EEA.

I. To conduct market research into our brands and services and to invite you to take part

We may use specialist agencies to carry out market research on our behalf. When we do this, the agencies usually just share information with us which does not identify individuals. If this is not the case (for example because you appear in a video or a name is included alongside a comment), then this would be explained to you before you participate.

If we are carrying out our own research, we may directly collect some information from you in order to facilitate the project, e.g., name, contact details and demographic information.

We also carry out research relating to actors and public figures and when we do this, we will receive information about public opinion of such people.

Information we use:

• For consumers and audiences: Sometimes a first name and age/location, but generally no identifiable information unless otherwise explained to you at the time you take part.
• For public figures: name and public opinions and perceptions about them.

Lawful Basis: Our legitimate interest to better understand how our brands and on-screen talent are perceived and to engage with our customers and audiences.

J. To measure how people perceive and engage with our brands on social media

When you post about us, our brands or programmes on social media, we may collate and report on this using a specialist platform so that we can better understand public perception of our brands. This is sometimes known as “social listening”.

Information we use:

• Social media username/handle
• Post contents

Lawful Basis:

Our legitimate interest to better understand how our brands are perceived and to engage with our customers/audiences.

If you choose to include sensitive information then we rely on the fact that this has been manifestly made public when you choose to share your personal information publicly on social media.

Where we propose using your personal information for any other uses or for any other lawful basis, we will ensure that we notify you first and get your consent as appropriate.

4. WHEN WE SHARE YOUR INFORMATION