Last updated: September 21, 2026. This page explains, in plain terms, what information is collected when you visit wavesofcourage.org, buy a ticket or sponsor a table, and which advertising and measurement companies receive it. It is part of, and should be read together with, our Privacy Policy.
By using this website, and in particular by completing a ticket, sponsorship or donation checkout, you acknowledge that the collection, use and sharing described on this page takes place. If you are not comfortable with it, you can use the controls in the Your choices section below, or contact us and we will help.
The short version
- Tickets and sponsorships for the Harvest Wave Kickoff Gala are advertised on Google and on Facebook/Instagram, and we measure which ads lead to ticket sales.
- To do that, this site loads a Google tag and a Meta (Facebook) pixel. They record which pages you view and which checkout steps you complete.
- When you check out, a scrambled (hashed) version of your email address, phone number and billing name and postcode is sent to Google and to Meta so they can confirm that an ad led to a purchase. They receive the scrambled version, not the plain text.
- Some of that purchase information is also sent to Google from Shopify's servers, not only from your browser.
- If you arrived from an ad, an advertising click ID travels with you, including when you move from houstonmerrill.com to this site.
- We do not sell email lists. We never use health information, or any assumption about your health or your family's circumstances, to target advertising.
Who is responsible
This website and its checkout are operated by Waves of Courage Inc., 10623 S Savannah Dr, Sandy, UT 84094, United States. Questions, requests and complaints: wavesofcourageinc@gmail.com.
The Harvest Wave Kickoff Gala is promoted for our benefit by Houston's Country (Houston Merrill), who runs the paid advertising for the event. The Google Ads account used for that advertising is Black Label Country, 851-054-3660, and the measurement described below reports back to that account. Waves of Courage remains the operator of this website and of the checkout, and remains responsible for the personal information collected here.
What we collect
Information you give us
- Name, email address, phone number, billing address and order contents when you buy a ticket, sponsor a table, or make a donation.
- Anything you send us directly, such as an email, a sponsorship enquiry, or an auction gift registration submitted through our gift registration form.
Information collected automatically
- Device and browser type, operating system, screen size, approximate location derived from your IP address, and the language your browser requests.
- Pages you view, links you click, how you reached the site, and how long you stay.
- Cookies and similar identifiers stored by your browser, including identifiers set by Google and Meta.
Advertising click identifiers
If you reach us by clicking an ad, the link carries a click identifier. We capture and pass along the following when they are present: gclid, gbraid, wbraid and dclid (Google), fbclid (Meta), ttclid (TikTok), msclkid (Microsoft), and campaign tags such as utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_content, utm_term and ref.
Google advertising and measurement
This site loads the Google tag (tag ID AW-18462138547), installed through the official Google & YouTube app for Shopify and linked to the Google Ads account Black Label Country, 851-054-3660.
What the Google tag records
Page views, product and ticket-tier views, searches, adding an item to the cart, starting checkout, adding payment information, and completed purchases, together with the order value and currency.
Browser-side and server-side measurement
Measurement on this store runs in two ways at once. The web connection sends events from your browser as you use the site. The server connection sends the equivalent purchase information to Google directly from Shopify's servers after an order is placed. Server-side sending is not affected by browser ad-blockers or cookie deletion, which is precisely why it exists; the information sent is the same order and customer-matching data described here.
Enhanced conversions — customer data sent to Google
Enhanced conversions are switched on, and the data-sharing level for this store is set to Google's Optimized setting. When you complete a purchase, your email address, phone number, and billing first name, last name, postcode and country are converted into an irreversible scrambled value (a SHA-256 hash) before being sent to Google. Google compares those scrambled values against its own records to confirm that one of our ads led to your purchase. Google receives the scrambled values; it does not receive the plain-text details from this tag.
Auto-tagging
Auto-tagging is enabled on the advertising account, so a gclid click identifier is added to the link when you click one of the Harvest Wave ads on Google. This is what allows a ticket sale to be matched back to a specific ad and search term.
How Google uses it
Google acts both as our measurement provider and for its own purposes as described in its policies. Google may use this data to measure ad performance, to build and serve audiences, and to improve its services. See Google's Privacy Policy and How Google uses information from sites or apps that use its services.
Where this site embeds a YouTube player, YouTube is a Google service and sets its own cookies when a video loads or plays.
Meta (Facebook and Instagram) advertising and measurement
This site loads the Meta pixel, ID 1296069285847083, installed as a custom pixel in our Shopify customer-events settings. It records page views, ticket-tier views, adding to cart, starting checkout and completed purchases, with order value and currency.
Where the checkout provides them, scrambled (hashed) versions of your email address, phone number and name are sent to Meta alongside the purchase event, so that Meta can match your purchase to an ad you saw or clicked. As with Google, Meta receives the scrambled values rather than the plain text.
Meta processes this under the Meta Business Tools Terms and its Privacy Policy, and may use it for its own purposes including ad targeting and measurement.
Under some US state privacy laws, sharing personal information with advertising partners in this way may be treated as a “sale” or “sharing” of personal information, or as targeted advertising. You can opt out — see below.
How the two Harvest Wave websites work together
The artist and tour site (houstonmerrill.com) and this ticket store (wavesofcourage.org) are two separate websites that form one ticket-buying journey. If you land on houstonmerrill.com from an ad and then click through to buy a ticket here, a small script on that site stores the advertising click identifiers listed above in your browser's session storage and adds them to the link when you click through to us.
This exists so that a ticket sale can be credited to the ad that produced it. Session storage is cleared by your browser when you close the tab. The identifiers are not used to build a profile of you and are not shared with anyone beyond the advertising platform that issued them.
Other services that receive data
- Shopify hosts this store and processes orders and payments on our behalf, under its own privacy policy.
- Payment processors handle card details directly. We never see or store your full card number.
- Apps installed on our store for email notifications, forms and site optimisation, each acting on our instructions.
- Technical SEO and site-performance tooling that reads page structure. It does not receive your order or contact details.
What we do not do
- We do not sell or rent your email address or phone number to anyone.
- We do not collect health information from you, and we never use health information, a diagnosis, a caregiving situation, or any assumption about your family's circumstances, to target advertising. Ads for the Harvest Wave Kickoff Gala are targeted on location and general interests only.
- We do not build advertising audiences out of the families we serve, and we do not use information from our programs for advertising.
- We do not knowingly collect information from children under 13.
- We do not use the advertising click identifiers described above for anything other than crediting a ticket sale to the ad that produced it.
Your choices
- Opt out of data sharing for targeted advertising: use our Your Privacy Choices page.
- Global Privacy Control: if your browser sends a GPC signal, we treat it as an opt-out request for that browser and device.
- Google ad personalisation: manage or turn it off at myadcenter.google.com.
- Meta ad preferences: manage them at facebook.com/adpreferences.
- Cookies: your browser settings let you block or delete cookies, including those set by Google and Meta. Some parts of the site may not work correctly if you block all cookies.
- Access, correction or deletion: email wavesofcourageinc@gmail.com with the subject line “Privacy request”. We will confirm receipt within 7 days and respond within 30 days. We will not discriminate against you for making a request.
Opting out of advertising measurement does not cancel your ticket, change your donation, or affect your acknowledgment letter.
How long we keep it
Ticket, sponsorship and donation records are kept for as long as needed to deliver and support your purchase, to issue acknowledgments, and to meet tax, accounting and charitable-reporting obligations. Advertising measurement data is retained by Google and Meta according to their own retention schedules, which we do not control. Website analytics and click identifiers are kept no longer than needed for campaign reporting, and in any case no longer than 24 months.
Changes to this page
If we add, remove or materially change an advertising or measurement tool, we will update this page and change the date at the top.
Contact
Waves of Courage Inc. · wavesofcourageinc@gmail.com · 10623 S Savannah Dr, Sandy, UT 84094, United States.