Consent
In practice, for a UK buyer
The paragraph above is the neutral answer. This is the part a vendor glossary leaves out.
In advertising, consent is usually collected far upstream by a publisher or a data vendor and passed down the chain as an encoded string. 'Consent-chained' means a provider asserts that chain exists — not that anyone downstream has verified every link in it, and this site is careful not to imply otherwise. Withdrawal propagation, meaning that a withdrawal upstream actually stops downstream processing, is the part most implementations handle worst.
What this one connects to
Most confusion in media buying comes from two adjacent terms being used interchangeably, so these are the neighbours worth reading next.
TCF consent string
A standardised, encoded record of what a user consented to, produced at the point of collection and readable by every participant downstream. It is passed along the advertising supply chain so that each participant can check whether it has a basis to process that person's data before it does.
Lawful basis
The legal ground relied on to process personal data, of which six exist under UK GDPR and at least one must be identified before processing begins. In advertising the two that matter are consent and legitimate interests, and the basis has to be settled before the processing, not after.
UK GDPR
The United Kingdom's data protection regime, retaining the structure of the EU General Data Protection Regulation. Requires a lawful basis for processing personal data and gives individuals rights over data about them.
Legitimate interests
A lawful basis permitting processing necessary for interests pursued by the controller or a third party, provided those interests are not overridden by the rights of the individual. Requires a documented balancing assessment.
More on compliance and clearance
UK data protection and UK advertising clearance: what has to be true before an ad runs.
45 minutes. Bring a real brief and we compile it live. You describe one audience and watch it compile into seven targeting specifications, each with the score for how much of the definition survived.
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