Policy

Privacy & Data Protection

Privacy and data protection rules play an important role for the digital advertising industry as delivering relevant advertising and measuring its effectiveness requires the processing of data. Processing data is a crucial for digital advertising to be efficient in funding digital content, services, and applications, making them widely available at little or no cost, as well as driving growth within the digital economy.

ePrivacy Regulation

The ePrivacy Directive (Directive 2002/58/EC), also nicknamed the “Cookie Directive” because of its rules on storing and accessing data on a users’ device, such as so-called Internet cookies, is a directive primarily regulating the processing of personal data in the electronic communications sector, i.e. by telecommunications providers.

The ePrivacy Directive is of import to the digital advertising industry because of the aforementioned rules on cookies, which are of general application and not limited to the electronic communications sector. Cookies play an important role in websites delivering a personalized experience, including relevant advertising. The ePrivacy Directive stipulates that member states must create rules that require website operators to inform the user concerned about the use of cookies and obtain their consent for the use of (most) cookies.

Now, the Commission has proposed repealing and replacing the Directive with an ePrivacy Regulation. As a matter of EU law, Regulations can be relied upon directly by citizens, meaning that EU Member States no longer have a role in interpreting its application to fit within their national legal order. In its current form, the Regulation would require the consent of users in line with the rules of the General Data Protection Regulation for the lawful use of cookies, advertising identifiers (e.g. IDFA and AAID), device fingerprinting, etc. to collect information (not just personal data) and to deliver targeted advertising.

The proposed Regulation would also mandate browsers and other software to provide the option to actively prevent data collection through cookies et al., and to force users to make a choice as to their preference during set up. This would be the case not just for web browsers, but for any application or device which can connect to the internet.

For more information on the political and legal aspects of the proposal, check out IAB Europe’s ‘Cookie Regulation FAQ’.

General Data Protection Regulation

The General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679) (“GDPR”) had been more than four years in the making when it finally entered into force on 25 May 2016. After a 24 months transition period, the GDPR will replace the existing patchwork of different national data protection laws in Europe, which are implementing the 20 year old European Data Protection Directive, with a single, directly applicable European law as of 25 May 2018.

IAB Europe has been advocating for a GDPR that provides a high level of data protection for Internet users while enabling digital advertising to continue playing its important role for the Internet ecosystem in the future. To this end IAB Europe has supported a risk-based approach to data protection, which would focus regulatory scrutiny and enforcement on data processing based on the meaningful risks for data subjects. IAB Europe has also been stressing the importance for the new law to provide clear rules that provide legal certainty for companies.

Resources

PRIVACYSHIELD

For more information please contact
Matthias Matthiesen
IAB Europe, in partnership with the IAB Tech Lab, announced on 25th April that the Policies and Technical Specifications for version 2.0 of ...
21 May 2019
IAB Europe Webinar Recording: TCF v2.0 – The full overview for Publishers
IAB Europe, in partnership with the IAB Tech Lab, announced on 25th April that the Policies and Technical Specifications for version 2.0 of ...
8 May 2019
IAB Europe Webinar Recording: TCF v2.0 – The full overview for CMPs and Vendors
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25 April 2019
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IAB Europe have provided some FAQs to help answer and address some of the key questions for TCF v2.0. The following will provide some backgr...
25 April 2019
TCF v2.0 FAQs
IAB Europe launched its Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF), on the 25th April 2018, to help the digital advertising ecosystem comply w...
25 April 2019
INTRODUCING FOR PUBLIC COMMENT:  TRANSPARENCY AND CONSENT FRAMEWORK (TCF) VERSION 2.0
This is the draft version for public comment of the Policies for Version 2.0 of the IAB Europe Transparency & Consent Framework. For mor...
25 April 2019
Draft for public comment of Transparency & Consent Framework Policies
The IAB Europe Transparency & Consent Framework is an open-source, not-for-profit industry standard that helps all parties in the digi...
1 October 2018
IAB Europe Webinar Recording: The IAB Europe Transparency & Consent Framework – A co...
This working paper on controller and processor definitions has been prepared by the members of the IAB Europe GDPR Implementation Group unde...
19 September 2018
IAB Europe GIG: Working Paper on Controller – Processor Criteria
Since the announcement of the European Commission’s ePrivacy Regulation proposal, IAB Europe has been working together with other associat...
22 June 2018
Our video investigation of ePrivacy realities across Europe
GDPR does not prevent take-it-or-leave-it choices for data-driven advertising-funded services.  The GDPR quite meaningfully changes the rul...
4 June 2018
Publishers are still in control of their product and business models
Programmatic technology is now at the forefront of data-driven advertising, indeed, half of European display ad revenue is now traded progra...
21 May 2018
GDPR impact on Programmatic Trading blog series: Approaches to preparing for GDPR and th...
Programmatic technology is now at the forefront of data-driven advertising, indeed, half of European display ad revenue is now traded progra...
13 April 2018
GDPR impact on Programmatic Trading blog series: IAB Europe’s new GDPR Transparency and Conse...
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