Consent

It’s not that people don’t care about their privacy – they do. The problem is that protecting it is often difficult, inconvenient and confusing.

The Trade Desk is facing class-action lawsuits claiming its “privacy-safe” Unified ID 2.0 is really just repackaged cookie tracking.

Regulators care about privacy in practice, not just in theory. Simply having a tool or partnership in place isn’t enough to demonstrate effective compliance.

The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office has three strategic priorities in 2025, and, you guessed it, online tracking is one of them.

Under the new leadership, the FTC is signaling a pivot away from sweeping rulemaking efforts to let Congress play that role, writes Uplevel CEO Raashee Gupta Erry.

To commemorate Data Privacy Day on Jan. 28, my gift to you is an update on something I think is about to get a lot more attention: universal opt-out mechanisms.

Starting on February 16, Google said it will no longer prohibit fingerprinting for companies that use its advertising products. Oh, how times have changed.

Although most people probably understand in an abstract way that they’re being tracked online, the details are fuzzy. Honestly, the details are fuzzy to me, and I write about this stuff for a living.

Musings on the Chrome Privacy Sandbox consent pop-up after experiencing one in the wild in Europe. Do people know what they’re opting into?

Do people hate ads? No, according to Vegard Johnsen, eyeo’s chief product officer. What they don’t like, he says, is not being treated with respect.

How would you describe the state of privacy in the ad tech industry? “In one word: fragmented,” says Tony Katsur, CEO of the IAB Tech Lab.

A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger.com that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem…

Collecting consent is a far more nuanced process than just getting someone to opt in. It also matters how you ask for it.

Streamers are raising prices amid a challenging environment to win subscribers. Plus: what big changes in data privacy and portability in Europe mean for ad tech.

Consent is becoming one of the most important requirements in online advertising – and InMobi wants to help publishers collect it.

Even companies that make good-faith efforts to comply with data protection laws can unwittingly end up with front-row seats to the privacy theater.

European regulators are losing their patience with companies that attempt to use legitimate interest as their legal basis for processing personal data. Meta is learning this the hard way.

Oracle is subtracting social sharing widget AddThis from its marketing cloud. As of May 31, Oracle will permanently terminate all AddThis services globally, including in the US.

When you combine ad tech integrations, in all their messy complexity, with data privacy laws like GDPR, the stakes for mistakes are high. Last week, our managing editor, Allison Schiff, broke one such story. PubMatic had set the default timer to get consent in its own identity management solution so low – between 1 millisecond […]

I’ve heard people say that there’s a Simpsons reference for every occasion. I posit that the same could be said of “South Park.” There’s an episode from 2011 that perfectly encapsulates the debate about notice and choice.

Notice and choice just got dragged at a House subcommittee hearing on privacy. Rep. Frank Pallone called it “coercive.”

You are not experiencing déjà vu. The CNIL, France’s data protection authority, did indeed issue three separate fines – all to do with consent or the lack thereof – over the course of less than two weeks.

Even the experts at companies whose future depends on explaining the value exchange of personalized advertising to consumers struggle to make a convincing argument. Part of the problem is that the ad industry’s MO has been to “overcomplicate” matters, said Lauren Wetzel, chief operating officer at InfoSum, speaking at LUMA’s Digital Media Summit earlier this week.

In September, the California Privacy Protection Agency made a call for feedback on new and outstanding issues not addressed by existing implementation regulations for CCPA, and the comments are in. One of the most hotly debated issues had to do with consent interfaces.

The word of the year, at least according to Collins English Dictionary, is “NFT.” Putting aside the fact that NFT is an acronym and not a word, consider a proposal that the word of the year for 2021 be “consent.”

An Axe To Grindr Norway’s data protection authority (DPA) fined Grindr $7 million for GDPR violations. The Norwegian watchdog says Grindr passed data to third parties without consent, and that it shared data on sexual orientation, which is prohibited regardless. The full text is worth reading.  Grindr, an LGBTQ dating app, objected on the grounds […]

On Thursday, iOS 15 beta testers who opened Apple’s App Store or Stock apps were presented with a pop-up requesting permission to enable personalized advertising. This is the first time Apple has asked users to opt in to personalized ads in its own apps. It’s a big deal, but there’s also a big caveat: Personalized […]

Multinational brands and ad tech companies doing business in China will have new hoops to jump through starting November 1. That’s when China’s newly passed privacy regulation, the Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL), goes into effect. The National People’s Congress, China’s top legislative body, voted to adopt the law on August 21. That doesn’t leave […]

The system prompt required by Apple’s AppTrackingTransparency framework doesn’t leave a ton of wiggle room. Apps have just a brief customizable text field above the fateful choice – “Allow tracking” or “Ask app not to track” – where they can share how they use data and why that data sharing might benefit a user. But there are […]

Cheerio, Europe. Experian-owned Tapad is exiting its European business after seven years in the market. Tapad will stop the delivery and use of its graph in the EU by August 1. The company denies rumors that its move is a preemptive measure to avoid an investigation by the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office. “Our decision to […]