Launched in 2022, the Global Privacy Platform (GPP) is a framework developed by the digital advertising technical standards body, IAB Tech Lab, to simplify the complex requirements of global privacy. In this edition of The Publisher Brief, we look at what publishers need to know about this new protocol, and the next steps they should take.

What is the Global Privacy Platform (GPP)?

The IAB Tech Lab unveiled the GPP on 1 June 2022 following two years of industry collaboration and consultation with technical and legal experts around the world; after 90 days of public comment, it was finalized on 28 September 2022.

The GPP is an open-source platform designed to simplify and streamline compliance in the face of the intensified focus on consumer privacy and the resulting increase in the number of global privacy regulations.

The GPP is one of the solutions developed by the IAB Tech Lab as part of Project Rearc, an initiative to ‘re-architect’ the digital advertising industry in light of the demise of the third-party cookie. As managing evolving privacy regulations across these multiple markets is becoming increasingly complicated, the GPP is intended to make it easier for advertisers, publishers and technology vendors across the digital advertising ecosystem to navigate these complexities and comply with regional privacy laws, each of which has its own attributes.

How the Global Privacy Platform works

As part of existing measures to safeguard online privacy, organizations already capture and transmit consent signals from multiple global privacy jurisdictions across the digital ad supply chain using a consent management platform (CMP). 

The GPP consolidates the handling of these by providing a single framework that communicates user consent and preferences. It also supports the Global Privacy Control (GPC) which works at the browser level to help users to opt out of the sale of their personal information. This allows all parties across the digital advertising ecosystem to recognise and act in alignment with each consumer’s stated preferences on targeted advertising and the processing of their personal data.

The GPP currently supports US Privacy, IAB Europe Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF) and IAB Canada TCF; support for the various US state specific privacy strings in the pipeline. These technical specifications were originally set up to help the digital advertising industry comply with the data protection and privacy rules in the specific areas denoted by their name. However, since then some regional data protection authorities (DPAs) have brought in compliance requirements for their own jurisdictions that are not addressed by these frameworks.

Instead, the GPP will be “the primary framework where future global user consent and preference signaling will be made available.”

What does the GPP mean for publishers?

Consent and user privacy a huge focus for the digital advertising industry, so publishers are naturally asking how to approach the GPP. 

With the need to consider user consent signals across multiple jurisdictions now set to be the norm, IAB Tech Lab are naturally advising publishers to adopt the GPP.

The good news for global publishers is that they already have a Consent Management Platform (CMP) in place to handle consent. The introduction of GPP strengthens compliance requirements as privacy regulations become adopted in selected states in America as well as in more countries across Europe.

Here are a few other ways that GPP might actually make life easier for publishers in a privacy-focused world:

• Streamlined data management. The GPP provides a standardized framework for managing user data, making it easier for publishers to collect and share data in a consistent and efficient way.
  
  
• Increased revenue potential. By obtaining user consent for data collection and consent sharing across the supply chain, publishers can provide more targeted and personalized advertising experiences, which can lead to higher incremental revenue.
  
  
• Improved user experience. The GPP enables users to exercise control over their personal data and choose which data they want to share, creating a more transparent and user-friendly experience.

Want to learn more about the GPP and how it might affect you as a publisher? Reach out to The MediaGrid team to talk about your best strategy for user consent management.