The Google consent management platform (CMP) Funding Choices will finally integrate with the IAB Europe’s Transparency & Consent Framework (TCF), the collaborative industry solution for passing consent data signals in the supply chain.
Google also said Thursday that Funding Choices now includes compliance with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). When traffic is from the EU or from California, publishers using the Google CMP will serve consent messages (aka pop-ups) that request explicit consent in the EU or offer the opportunity to opt-out of ad targeting in California, in accordance with respective laws.
Publishers can start testing the Funding Choices TCF integration today, according to a blog post announcing the news.
The Google ad tech stack will integrate with the TCF when the update is launched in August. Funding Choices is a registered CMP available to publishers using the IAB Europe framework starting today.
The integration offers publishers “a common language” so that consent data can be used for personalized advertising and ad measurement, writes Vegard Johnsen, Google’s senior product manager for ads privacy and safety, in the blog post.
The IAB Europe and the IAB Tech Lab, which jointly oversee the TCF policies and the CMP program, published the TCF 2.0, the updated version, a year ago, and at the time Google was expected to integrate by the end of Q1 2020.
Ad tech vendors originally expected Google’s consent framework to sync with industry CMPs and the ad tech ecosystem in August 2018, and for two years the two sides circled a deal without managing to bring Google on board.
Google’s integration is important for the ecosystem not just because Google’s consent signals will be conveyed clearly to general ad tech vendors, and via other CMPs (so publishers don’t have to use the Google-owned product).
Google’s hesitation and delays in joining the IAB consent program was seen as an unspoken rejection of the TCF. Publishers trust Google to manage its GDPR exposure, so they were largely defaulting to Google’s consent system, instead of using the industry solution.
