shopAds Data Retention Schedule
Effective date: 28 October 2026
1. Purpose
This schedule records how long shopAds LLC (“shopAds”) keeps each category of personal data, and why. The governing principle is that shopAds keeps personal data only for as long as it is needed for the purpose it was collected for, and then deletes or anonymises it, except where the law requires it to be kept for longer. This schedule is consistent with the shopAds Privacy Policy and the merchant Data Processing Agreement.
2. Merchant customer and visitor data held as processor
For the customer and visitor data that shopAds processes on a merchant’s behalf, which includes customer contact details, order details, records linking advertising to orders, product reviews left on the merchant’s store, and session and behavioural data collected on the merchant’s store, shopAds deletes or anonymises the data within 30 days of the merchant uninstalling the app or closing their account, unless the law requires part of it to be kept for longer. Consent signals collected for regulated regions are held as part of this data and are deleted on the same basis.
Where that data has been transferred into the advertising account and the analytics property that shopAds provisions and operates for the merchant, shopAds deletes it on the same basis and within the same 30 days; the platform completes its own deletion on its own schedule. The advertising account itself is deactivated within the same period, so that it can no longer serve or incur spend and holds no personal data, and is retired thereafter.
Short lived operational records are deleted automatically, on a rolling basis, within 91 days, during the life of the relationship rather than only at its end.
3. Account connection credentials
The credentials that connect to the accounts a merchant grants shopAds access to, being the merchant’s store and the merchant’s product listing account, are held only for as long as the connection is active, and are deleted promptly when a merchant disconnects an account or uninstalls the app, and within 30 days at the latest.
4. Incomplete onboarding
Where a merchant begins onboarding and does not complete it, shopAds keeps what they have entered only while their setup remains open, and removes it no later than 30 days after the merchant’s last action in the setup. The merchant may ask for the setup to be removed immediately. When the setup is removed, the advertising account and the analytics property provisioned for the merchant are deactivated and deleted on the basis set out in section 2, the connection credentials are deleted under section 3, and the authorisation evidence the merchant gave before stopping is kept under section 8.
5. Merchant account and contact data held as controller
The account and contact details used to register, identify, authenticate, and communicate with a merchant are kept while the merchant is an active customer, and are deleted or anonymised within 90 days of the account being closed, except for the records covered below that must be kept for legal reasons. The same applies to the details of any other person the merchant has given access to their account, which are also deleted or anonymised within 90 days of that person’s access being revoked.
6. Optimisation records held as controller
shopAds keeps records of the advertising settings it chose for each merchant and the results those settings produced. These records hold no personal data about any shopper. They are kept for 84 months after the merchant’s account is closed, and are then deleted.
7. Billing and fee records
Records needed to account for the management fee, including payment method references, the fee ledger, and invoices, are kept for 84 months after the merchant’s last charge, which meets applicable tax and accounting law, and are then deleted. They hold no data about any merchant’s customers or visitors. shopAds’ own books of account, which record the company’s income and expenses and contain no data about any merchant’s customers or visitors, are kept permanently; a merchant appears in them only as the party invoiced.
8. Authorisation and onboarding evidence
The records that evidence a merchant’s authorisation and acceptance, including the fee mandate authorisation, acceptance of the Data Processing Agreement and of the Terms of Service, together with the name of the person who accepted them, consent and authorisation records, and the onboarding and authentication logs, are kept for the duration of the relationship and for 84 months after it ends, so that shopAds can evidence the authorisation it acted on and defend a dispute within the period one could be brought.
9. Security and audit logs
Logs of access to personal data and of system and security events are kept for 12 months to support security monitoring and investigation, and are then deleted.
10. Support communications
Communications with a merchant through support are kept for 24 months and are then deleted, except where a specific communication needs to be kept for longer as part of the billing or authorisation records above.
11. Backups
When personal data is deleted from the live systems, it is removed from backups within 90 days.
12. Website data
Technical and analytics data collected from visitors to shopads.ai is kept for up to 14 months and is then deleted or aggregated.
13. Optimisation settings and state held during the relationship
The advertising settings a merchant gives shopAds, and the settings and decisions shopAds makes for that merchant’s account, are held under the merchant’s account while the merchant is an active customer, and are deleted with the account within 90 days of its closure. The only optimisation records kept after an account is closed are those described in section 6.
14. Evidence of deletion
Records that evidence shopAds carried out a deletion or offboarding obligation, which name the store or account concerned and what was deleted but hold none of the deleted data, are kept for up to seven years, so that shopAds can demonstrate that the obligation was met.
15. Operator configuration
Lists of store domains permitted to install the app during a closed period are operator configuration. They hold no customer or visitor data, and are kept while the permission is in force and for 12 months after it is withdrawn.
16. Review
shopAds reviews this schedule as the service and its legal obligations change, and updates the periods where a change requires it.
17. Provisioning records
shopAds keeps a record of each account, property and application it creates for a merchant at an advertising, measurement, payment or ecommerce platform, naming the store and merchant it was created for and what became of it. It holds no customer or visitor data, and is kept while the item exists and for up to seven years after it is deleted or closed.