IAB introduced the Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF) in 2018 to help digital advertising platforms comply with the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the ePrivacy Directive (ePD) when processing personal data or accessing and/or storing information on a user’s device. While it was a step in the right direction, the first version of TCF did not meet certain needs that ad buyers had.
Since then, the industry has seen an update on the framework with the launch of TCF 2.0, which makes it more fool-proof and fair while maintaining its core value proposition: user-controlled consent management.
The new version lets consumers grant or withhold consent and also exercise their ‘right to object’ to data being processed. At the same time, it allows publishers to gain greater control and flexibility with respect to how they integrate and collaborate with their technology partners. But what does it mean for buyers?
One of the biggest hurdles with the earlier version of TCF was that Google, one of the largest ad tech players in the market, did not participate in or support the TCF. With the binary consent framework, TCF 1.0 and Google’s own approach to consent framework, suddenly there were three mechanisms to for GDPR compliance in the ecosystem. This resulted in buyers having to prioritize a particular mechanism and consequently limit supply sources.
With Google now opting in to TCF 2.0, it is now set to become the single consent management mechanism that is widely accepted. As publishers and Consent Management Platforms (CMPs) start supporting TCF 2.0, buyers can confidently make the required changes to parse the TCF 2.0 consent string without having to create workflows separately for supply partners and CMPs.
IAB TCF 2.0 has brought in upgrades in policies and implementation of the Global Vendor List (GVL) and the CMP Validator.
The new Global Vendor List registration allows vendors to select from three legal bases (consent as sole legal basis, legitimate interest as sole legal basis or consent or legitimate interest) as opposed to two legal bases in TCF v1 (legitimate interest or consent) for data processing. This flexible basis allows vendors to accommodate different interpretations of GDPR amongst various data processing agreements. The upgrades on the CMP validator policies also allow vendors to ensure the CMP’s compliance with the latest more stringent guidelines.
Further, TCF 2.0 also ensures that the end users see the most accurate information about the vendor and their purposes. It accomplishes this by keeping the most recent records of the First and Second layer messaging of the publisher’s UIs.
InMobi is now a certified IAB TCF 2.0 Vendor. In the last few months, we have been working closely with our publishers and industry-leading CMPs (Ogury, Faktor and OneTrust in particular) to enable TCF 2.0 compliant inventory for those demand partners ready to process the TCF 2.0 consent string. This will be available in addition to TCF 1.0 and binary consent inventory.
We will continue our efforts in making the adoption of TCF 2.0 seamless for both our supply and demand side partners. Please feel free to reach out to us for further information.
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