The world of performance marketing and its tracking has been continuously challenged in the last few years, with the mission to enhance data protection as well as increase consumer transparency.
So, what’s TCF and why does it matter?
In line with European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the German Federal Court of Justice (BGH) ruled that anyone who wishes to use user data for marketing purposes has to obtain active consent.
While this has been a great initiative in generating sensitivity to consumer data, it has led to much uncertainty in the digital marketing realm, which works solely based on data. To make it easier for those who display and manage digital advertising and develop targeted content to comply with GDPR, the industry association Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has come up with a Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF).
The Framework consists of open-source technical specifications managed by the IAB Tech Lab, and policies managed by IAB Europe. It has been designed to standardise the provision of notice about personal data processing, and the transmission of signals about user choices and transparency related to data processing, so that the digital advertising supply chain can continue to function in a way that aligns with GDPR requirements.
Source: https://iabeurope.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/TCF-Fact-Sheet_General.pdf
TCF requires that Consent Management Platforms and technology providers fulfil specific criteria that portrays choice, transparency, control and compliance, in order to be registered to a central registry of compliant vendors.
What is TCF 2.0?
After 12 months of shareholder feedback, the second iteration of TCF was agreed upon, to provide users and publishers even greater control. Some examples include:
- Elaborating what “Marketing” includes in the cookie consent, so users can make more informed choices regarding the processing of their personal data
- Explaining fully what “Legitimate interests” means, when used as a legal basis for data processing
- Making individual settings per default empty, so they have to actively opt-in, e.g. by ticking a box
TCF 2.0 will take effect on 15th August 2020.
What is Ingenious Technologies doing about this?
The mission of TCF aligns with our values as a technology provider, as we invest intensely on enhancing our tracking system – which lies at the heart of our partner marketing platform. Therefore, we have started or are working on the following measures:
- We already completed the IAB registration for TCF. Our Global Vendor List (GVL) ID is 871.
- We are extending our tracking product Trail to support the TCF-GDPR macros in all event types, i.e. ad impressions, clicks, page impressions or conversions.
- Each platform owner and partner or advertiser within a platform will be able to set their own TCF-Vendor-ID.
- All products of Ingenious Technologies will comply with the user consent measures, and the information will be made available throughout the user interface via event types, as well as synchronised with external systems via Data Warehouse (via our analytics product Insights) and API endpoints.
All in all, we will allow smooth transition to TCF for the platform owner, so that their partners and advertiser have time to adapt. In the meantime, if you have any questions or concerns concerning our plan towards TCF 2.0, contact us!
Want to collect the most accurate data?
We believe that accurate and reliable tracking is the foundation of your growth path using partner marketing. To answer to that responsibility, we build the industries most advanced and flexible technology for tracking and attribution.
