By January 16, 2024, all advertisers who use Google AdSense, AdManager or AdMob will be required to use a Google Certified Consent Management Platform (CMP) when serving ads to users in the European Economic Area or the UK. 

Let’s talk about:

• Why this happened
• What businesses need to do
• Selecting a Google Certified CMP

It all started with TCF: IAB Europe’s Transparency and Consent Framework

The Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF) is an industry standard framework initiated by the IAB Europe back in 2017, in anticipation of GDPR compliance. Together with 70+ member companies and trade associations, IAB Europe released the TCF and numerous updates since its inception. The latest is TCF v2.2. 

The TCF is an accountability tool. It exists to help vendors, publishers, and consent management platforms (CMPs) comply with European data protection laws like GDPR and ePrivacy. It does this by delivering a set of policies and implementation guidelines for publishers and technology partners. These help those organizations to deliver a standardized privacy experience to customers, which empower customer choices and advertiser accuracy across channels. 

The goal is to “harmonize” privacy laws, supporting consumer rights to transparency and control, while supporting businesses in responsible data practices and handling. 

The TCF has broad support across the digital advertising industry, with many organizations looking to the framework as a standard for operations. Google followed suit: in 2020, they integrated their ads with the TCF. Now, in an effort to support industry standards and consistent user experiences, they’re requiring the same of all advertisers leveraging the Google ad network. 

Google believes that by adopting IAB Europe’s standardized framework, they will: 

• Help the industry move towards a more unified approach to transparency and consent
• Contribute to the evolution of user privacy and support a more privacy-conscious digital advertising ecosystem

Does this impact your business? 

If you are serving ads in Europe leveraging the Google ad network, you are impacted by this change. 

Starting January 16, 2024, all advertisers leveraging Google AdSense, AdManager or AdMob will be required to use a Google Certified CMP. Meeting Google’s requirement isn’t just complying with Google–you’re adhering to a respected framework for processing data in a compliant, transparent manner.

If you haven’t already, now is the time to evaluate your CMP, check if they’re certified, and choose another provider if necessary. 

Selecting a Google Certified CMP

You can view the complete list of Google Certified CMPs here. You must select a CMP from this Google-approved list to ensure no disruptions to your ad revenue streams. 

When you select a CMP from this list, you can be assured that consent signals sent to Google’s suite are in line with the latest TCF version release. The CMP is required to capture your user preferences and set specific signals for those preferences so that anyone subscribing to the TCF framework can read it.

Consent management platform selection 

Selecting a CMP for your business goes beyond making sure the vendor is Google-certified. Depending on your customer base and business goals, there are other key factors to consider. A few examples include: 

• How many places, platforms, and channels do you need to think about when it comes to capturing people’s consent preferences? If you’re a digital business, it probably goes well beyond Google. Make sure your CMP delivers desired banner and privacy notice experiences across every channel you require.
• How many jurisdictions do your customers live in? While TCF is specific to European audiences, your business may include customers in California, Brazil, and more. Look for a CMP that makes it easy for your to create jurisdiction-aware policies and banners. 
• Have you thought about how you’ll reflect customer privacy choices in your downstream systems? For example, If a user requests their data be deleted: can you easily do that in your internal systems and external apps? Ask your CMP provider what kind of integrations and API connections they offer. 

For a more detailed discussion on consent management software, check out our blog: 3 requirements for effective consent management.

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Ketch can help 

Ketch is a Google-certified CMP. Today, we help companies from direct-to-consumer retailers to global publishing houses comply with TCF standards of data processing in complex data environments. 

Ketch was founded by veterans of the data management and advertising technology industry. Our data privacy software is informed by intimate, technical understanding of the complex digital advertising landscape. The core attributes of the Ketch platform–flexible, automated, interoperable–are informed by the knowledge that successful data privacy management requires a unique balance of technology and process. 

Learn more about Ketch consent and preference management here.