CJ’s Loyalty Exemption Solution Addresses a Critical Industry Challenge

CJ is deeply committed to both consumer privacy and tracking integrity.

For many years, we’ve promoted the idea of win-win-win for our industry; effective performance marketing must benefit advertisers, publishers, and, most importantly, consumers. Our team works at the forefront of innovation, ensuring we deliver on this commitment and enable advertisers and publishers to earn consumer trust. 

Right now, one of the hottest topics in the performance marketing industry lies at the intersection of marketing performance measurement and consumer consent. Various global regions, including the EU, UK, Canada, and many US states, have enacted laws and guidelines giving consumers more control over their personal data and how it can be used. The best-known of these is the EU’s GDPR.

The Loyalty Exemption 

One area CJ has addressed this is in relation to what we call the ‘loyalty exemption,’ where loyalty publisher models, such as cashback and reward sites, do not require consent under data privacy laws to track their transactions when certain criteria are met. 

As provided in the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003  (PECR), certain essential cookies do not require consent. Examples of situations where CJ uses essential cookies are when we need to identify a consumer to provide them with loyalty points or cash back. If a consumer has requested loyalty points or cash back from one of our publishers, we need to use our cookies or otherwise access the consumer's device to ensure that the loyalty points or cash back are provided to the correct consumer.

The UK data protection authority, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), recently updated its FAQ to clarify the strictly necessary exemption provided by PECR applies. The ICO's response aligns with CJ’s approach, affirming that essential cookies are permissible when consumers request services like cashback or rewards, provided certain criteria are met. The French data protection authority, CNIL, supports this interpretation, recognising that consent is unnecessary for trackers used in these contexts.

CJ’s Loyalty Exemption Solution

CJ has been working with publishers for many years to ensure consumers requesting loyalty services, such as points or cashback, are accurately tracked. This was based on industry-wide consensus around the loyalty exemption when the GDPR took effect in 2018.  

We’re now rolling out additional solutions for all advertisers to receive a signal from CJ when a consumer has requested loyalty or cashback services. For such transactions, CJ must use cookies or otherwise access the consumer's device to provide the services requested by the consumer. Therefore, CJ is not asking the Advertiser to obtain consent for CJ to track such transactions. Instead, CJ relies on an exemption and CJ’s tracking can be immediately engaged when these consumers arrive on-site. 

CJ is also addressing, with our Privacy-Preserving Measurement Suite, the need to solve for untracked sales from non-loyalty publisher transactions that cannot leverage the loyalty exemption. 

Why the CJ Loyalty Solution is Important

Tracking sales and rewards for customers using loyalty publishers is important:

• For the Consumer: It ensures advertisers and publishers can deliver the value they were promised. Users expect to receive the rewards promised for participation in rewards programmes, and accurate tracing ensures we can provide that value. 
• For the Publisher: It safeguards their reader relationships and enables them to receive performance-based compensation from advertisers for their member benefits. 
• For the Advertiser: It protects their relationships with customers, enabling them to offer outstanding values, measure programme effectiveness, and optimise to deliver maximum consumer impact.

CJ’s Privacy-Preserving Measurement Suite

Performance marketers know there are many measurement complexities in our field. CJ is committed to offering the industry’s best solutions for all of them. 

Loyalty Exemption is one example of the broad array of solutions CJ offers to create win-win-win relationships in performance marketing. Our comprehensive Privacy-Preserving Measurement Suite provides the industry’s most accurate performance measurement platform while safeguarding consumer privacy and respecting their choices. 

Connect with your client or partner development lead for more information on the Loyalty Exemption solution or answers to other measurement questions.

To learn more about how CJ can improve results for your programme, get in touch.

This article is for information purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.