What is a Consent Management Platform?
We teamed up with Sourcepoint, a consent management platform service, to discuss what a CMP is and why we need it.
We’ve talked a lot about third-party cookies on our blog. Google’s upcoming deprecation of cookies has been on our mind and we’ve been making changes to how we collect data in anticipation of next year.
Enter consent management platforms. If you caught our last webinar (and if you haven’t, definitely check it out here) you’ll have heard from Sourcepoint, a consent management platform service that helps publisher platforms not only comply with GDPR, but exceed it. We’ve been working with Sourcepoint since early 2022 as our preferred consent management platform provider.
The rundown
Consent management platforms (CMPs) are tools used by websites or apps that obtain and manage user consent for data usage. The CMP can then parcel up that user consent/data for vendors and companies to utilise the data in a safe, encrypted (and most importantly, consented) manner.
When you visit a website for the first time from a new browser, it’s the pop-up message that outlines the purpose for which your user data is being utilised. There’s options to accept or personalise your preferences, but the importance of this message is the information shared with the user. Essentially, this is the data being collected, this is who it’s going to and here’s where you can opt out. It puts the control in the user’s hands.
Rewriting the playbook
In the internet pre-GDPR, third-party cookies could be caught from nearly any website, potentially unbeknownst to the user. However, with a CMP in place, all non-essential and third-party cookies should not be active until a user makes their consent choice, and that choice is communicated to the vendors via the CMP.
CMPs streamline the allowance of transparent data to flow between users and publishers and advertisers, while maintaining the user’s anonymity and personal preferences. With all of the data that exists around our internet identities, CMPs serve as a blockade against malicious, unfettered data usage.
Changing the game
With third-party cookies becoming increasingly obsolete, CMPs will become more important to publishers. GDPR kick-started the data management craze on a global scale, but there are still some countries that will need to make changes to be ready for Google’s move away from third-party cookies in 2024. We’ve said it before: first party data is going to be the key to publisher success. CMPs are crucial in collecting and protecting first-party data for publishers.
As other countries adopt stricter and stricter data protection laws and guidelines, publishers and advertisers will need to stay abreast of any changes. This can be difficult if you have a global audience, but Sourcepoint makes it easy for us by imparting industry knowledge around the data protection regulations. We rely on them to protect our users and keep our publishers in line with any upcoming changes to data laws. They’re a crucial defender of user rights and publisher values, and are invaluable as a CMP service.
If you’d like to learn more about CMPs and data protection, we love Sourcepoint’s blog. Want to become a Publisher Collective partner? You can apply here.