28 Mar, 2018
Written by
Kevin Hartleben
We've launched a free tool for advertisers and publishers to gather GDPR and ePD compliant consent from consumers for digital advertising - and it's publicly available today for any advertiser and publisher.
Announcing the Conversant and CJ Affiliate Consent Tool: a lightweight mechanism to help advertisers and publishers gain compliant consent from consumers for their digital advertising activity in relation to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the ePrivacy Directive (ePD).
The Conversant and CJ Affiliate Consent Tool is designed to blend compliance and business continuity, for both advertisers and publishers - and we're making it available for free, whether you work with Conversant and/or CJ Affiliate or not.
Consumer-friendly data-privacy is a long-held principle throughout Conversant – our services have been built from the ground-up with ‘privacy by design’ as a fundamental approach – and we wholeheartedly support giving consumers greater transparency and choice around what happens with their data. This new consent tool is a real testament to this, as well as our commitment to continued innovation and the industry as a whole.
Here, I’d like to explain what the consent tool is, how it works, and how it gains GDPR and ePD compliant consent from consumers.
In the lead-up to the GDPR, much of the focus within the adtech community is on data processing bases such as legitimate interest and consent. However, there is an additional piece of regulation that is relevant for online data processing: the ePrivacy Directive (ePD).
The IAB EU echoes this sentiment, which is why they have created a framework - the Transparency and Consent Framework - in which online advertising companies can communicate with each other regarding whether they have obtained consent per user.
Under the ePD, consumers must consent before the processing of cookie IDs and other similar technologies (cookies). Importantly, after 25th May 2018 this consent must be “unambiguous”, as per the GDPR.
The Conversant and CJ Affiliate Consent Tool is designed to request GDPR and ePD compliant consent from visitors to advertiser and publisher websites, then store and share that consent within the IAB EU's Transparency and Consent Framework.
This lightweight application integrates onsite, only appearing when necessary in order to capture consent across all vendors integrated on your site and those included in your digital supply chain of advertising and measurement.
The consent tool makes essential checks before determining whether it should appear (including, but not limited to):
Once this logic is validated, the consent tool appears with a dynamic list of vendors who are eligible to gather consent from the site visitor. The list of vendors is compiled by the site, and may include indirect vendors whose services are essential in digital brand continuity (e.g. viewability and ad fraud, brand lift studies, etc…).
Vendors who already have consent will not appear, nor will those with an active no-consent flag; a configurable timeframe determined by the site to respect the no-consent user decision. Affirmative consent will last a maximum of 13 months.
Conversant has collaborated with the IAB EU and other adtech leaders to introduce a consent framework for the reading and storing of user consent decisions - the IAB EU's Transparency and Consent Framework.
Members of the IAB EU framework will access consent via the centralised storage, whilst non-members will be able to integrate with a Conversant endpoint to access user preferences.
This uniform approach to passing consent across the digital supply chain is designed to minimise the additional calls that would be necessary to check consent across multiple vendors. A standardised framework and common protocol reduces the load time of consent mechanisms on a site.
The tool is also part of Conversant and CJ Affiliate’s continued collaboration with IAB EU, with the tool acting as a Consent Management Provider (CMP). The relationship ensures our consent tool is built to the same compliance and technical standards as the framework itself.
The Conversant and CJ Affiliate Consent Tool itself is intended to be a quick integration, helping you to become compliant with the new regulations under the GDPR and ePD.
While this free tool has been designed to aid Conversant and CJ Affiliate advertisers and publishers to gain consent for their digital advertising activities, we recognise the value of this tool for the wider industry. As such, we’ve made this tool publicly available, for any advertiser or publisher.
For queries regarding the tool, please reach out to us via email, and to find out more about Conversant and CJ Affiliate’s approach to the GDPR and ePD, please read our statement here.
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