Consent Management Platform (CMP)

A CMP is a tool to help manage compliance within the IAB Europe’s Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF) and GDPR.  A CMP empowers the owners of domains to obtain, manage, and propagate consumer consent to share their cookie data on the site or with associated vendors. 

GDPR is the primary regulation in EU law on data protection and privacy. IAB TCF is the only GDPR consent solution built by the digital advertising industry for the industry. 

Why use a CMP, not a cookie banner?

Publishers and marketers should use a CMP built on the IAB TCF to ensure their CMP is built to cover their sites' businesses with 3rd party vendors not just their own.

Traditional cookie banners may not provide the unambiguous, granular consumer consent that GDPR requires. In addition, cookie banners generally do not propagate any consent signal to the downstream vendors. Contrasted with cookie banners, a CMP provides the consent audit trail that is central to the GDPR’s requirements.

What does a CMP do? 

There are four core CMP functions: 

1. Consent Notification: provides consumer notices for collecting and processing personal data

2. Privacy Preferences: provides consumer options to exercise consent and legitimate interest preferences at granular levels

3. Signal Capturing & Sharing: captures consumer preferences in an IAB-compliant consent cookie to share with approved partners

4. Proof of Compliance: Ability to access the audit log for implemented CMP

What should I know when choosing a CMP?

1. Select an IAB validated and registered CMP.

2. Choose a CMP that is designed to get maximum opt-in rates in the most compliant way.

3. Choose a CMP that is easy to configure and customize. 

4. Consider advanced features to increase compliance and insights and protect revenue.

You can access the IAB Certified CMP list by following this link.