Over the last few years, GDPR, CCPA, ePrivacy Directive, and other regulations have continuously introduced new requirements for consumer transparency and choice in digital advertising. IAB, the leading industry association, has established the technical framework to help businesses gather users’ consent and ensure GDPR compliance while conducting targeted advertising.
The first release of IAB’s Transparency & Consent Framework was launched in 2018 and solved the initial challenge to create a common standard in the digital advertising ecosystem. In essence, it enabled the transmission of user consent from publishers to advertisers and connected disclosures publishers made on their websites with the actual usage of personal data for targeting purposes.
The second version of TCF was created in August 2019; it incorporated the received feedback from platforms, publishers, advertisers, and regulatory authorities. It became generally available on April 30, 2020, and to this date MGID has fully renewed its tech stack in order to ensure its compliance with the new framework.
On August 15, 2020, TCF v1.0 is planned to discontinue, and the new release will be taking full effect across all stakeholders in the advertising supply chain. Let’s discuss its key features, benefits, and what steps are needed to be taken by publishers.
What’s new with IAB’s TCF v2.0?
Several key improvements are distinguishing the second version of TCF from the initial release. First of all, there are more purposes for user data processing, and it provides guidance on each of the ten purposes. Using this set of purposes, vendors and publishers can identify the allowed actions once they receive a signal in the consent strings.
In the latest release, publishers and website operators have more control over data utilization and sharing throughout the supply chain. In particular, they can choose the purposes for data processing by vendors or even forbid certain ad tech vendors from using some purposes.
In addition, storing or accessing cookies on a user device now requires an expression of clear consent, with no possibility of doing this for legitimate interest.
Benefits for users
The ultimate goal of the TCF 2.0 initiative is to increase transparency for users and offer them more choices on how their data can be used. Website operators and publishers are now obliged to provide more information and offer a choice to consumers on how their data can be used.
Thus, data subjects will be able to exercise more granular controls and opt-out from precise geolocation targeting or active scanning of their device characteristics, which can be used for further identification. Also, users will be able to opt-in at the purpose level or for every vendor individually.
Key action points for MGID publishers
It is important to make all necessary adjustments before the 30th of September 2020, after which the initial release will be completely deprecated. For publishers using their own in-house CMPs, IAB Europe provides support and comprehensive guidance on the framework implementation.
Publishers using a third-party Consent Management Platform (CMP) can make the transition a lot easier for themselves and ensure that their chosen partner is v2.0 compliant. To check whether the CMP meets the criteria of the IAB Europe’s CMP Compliance Programme, you can consult with IAB’s CMP list here.
From then on, you have to optimize the user consent journey and re-consent the existing audience of your website. It can be recommended to group purposes in the most digestible way, so users can easily comprehend them.
Final thought
IAB’s Transparency & Consent Framework was created to help companies comply with the new regulations quickly and on a massive scale. It is one of the crucial industry initiatives that standardizes consent collection and defines how consent can be transmitted through the advertising supply chain.
MGID has made a dedicated effort to implement the requirements of the TCF v2.0 which can be found on the IAB’s vendor list. Together with publishers, ad tech vendors, and agencies, we are ready to support the new framework helping the end-users choose how their personal data is being processed on the web.
