Privacy and Consent Implementation
Outbrain is able to collect consent and opt out data directly from partner sites or applications or via third party partners who connect Outbrain to Partner sites or applications.
While Outbrain is able to collect the respective consent data itself through the widget code, it is the partner’s responsibility to make sure that the Outbrain widget can receive and process the consent signal. The partner must not send a null or invalid signal in cases where consent notices are required such as GDPR in Europe and CCPA in California.
GDPR
Outbrain is a participant in the IAB Transparency & Consent Framework and is able to read both V1.1 and V2 consent strings. Outbrain requires partners to implement an IAB approved consent management platform (“CMP”) which can be found on this page: https://iabeurope.eu/cmp-list/. Please note that V1.1 of the TCF is officially deprecated by the IAB and most vendors will not be able to process a V1.1 consent string any more.
When the partner has implemented an IAB approved CMP, Outbrain is able to collect the consent data automatically on most implementations, including JS widget on web and mobile web.
In case the Outbrain JS widget is served through a 3rd party mediation, it is necessary to check if __tcfapi is available (documented here). In case it is not available the consent string must be actively passed on in a macro as documented under the bullets web mediation and app mediation.
Special attention is needed for AMP pages where the partner needs to make sure that partner is following one of the methods described here.
For SDK implementations it is necessary that the partner implements an IAB approved CMP that is able to collect the consent from the users according to the IAB TCF V2.0 framework. Partner must use an up-to-date version of the Outbrain SDK which is able to retrieve and process the consent string. For IOS all versions support TCF V 2.0 onwards from Outbrain SDK 3.8.6. For Android TCF V2.0 is supported from version 3.9.1
CCPA
Outbrain supports the IAB CCPA Framework that allows users in California to opt out of the Sale of Personal Information as described here. Outbrain strongly recommends partners use CMP that supports passing on the CCPA signal. In either case the partner must make sure that Outbrain is able to retrieve and process the CCPA consent string in order to honour the user’s choice.
It is the partner’s responsibility to pass on the CCPA consent signal on every installation type for users in California.