The topic of consent stole the show at this week’s State of the Nation event. Kicking off with a discussion on the rapidly changing landscape, IAB Canada shared the second wave of the iOS 14.5 Opt-in Barometer Report to illustrate the importance of carefully assessing media commentary which has been reporting grave numbers of global opt-in hovering around the 15% range. Premium content providers are seeing significantly higher rates of consent with variances across categories:
News: 20%
Arts/Culture/Music: 15%
Video Streaming: 40%
Shopping/Commerce: 25%
Gaming: 50%
Social Media: 50%
IAB Canada Barometer Wave 2 2021: Average Opt-in Rates as reported by IAB Canada members
With several references to the newly proposed Bill C-11 (which relies on an expressed consent default), one thing is clear, the need for obtaining consumer consent is not going away. So then comes the $9B (estimated size of the digital advertising industry in Canada) question – how best to get consumers to click “allow”? Is there more to the compulsory pop-up than meets the eye?
At Wednesday’s privacy panel, featuring Adam Kardash, of Osler Hoskin and Harcourt LLP and Townsend Feehan, CEO IAB Europe, everyone unanimously agreed that along with the heightened intensity around consent as a basic requirement there also needs to be meaningful transparency throughout a user’s online digital experience. On top of this, consumers must be given the ability to revoke consent at any time.
Ahead of more stringent legislation expected to come into play, we should be going “all in on transparency and control” according to Feehan. Instead of waiting for Ottawa to tell us what to do we should instead, focus on the tools that sit in front of us ;today – namely, the hundreds of Consent Management Platforms (CMPs) that are being used globally to give consumers the transparency and control they so desperately want and ethically deserve.
IAB Canada members from Quantcast, OneTrust and Consentmanager all leading CMP providers, dug even deeper into the science of gaining consent in a panel discussion reassuring our audience that although opt-in rates were low at the onset of GDPR, they are now upwards of 80% three years post-launch. According to these industry experts it’s certainly not all doom and gloom and Canadian marketers should avoid being paralyzed by fear. Both marketers and publishers would be well-advised to find a well-suited CMP partner now to start testing and building out strategy on how to optimize consent from their valuable first party audience platforms.
Some sound advice coming from the panel was to start by testing with the small number of customers that are currently coming to your site from the EU or California and use the learnings for when it matters at scale. CMPs offer several services and features such as self-serve installment, A/B testing, complex metrics-based dashboards, and adherence with up-to-date cross-jurisdictional requirements. Another added bonus is the 3-year experience advantage that many CMPs bring to the table from experimenting in real-time within the GDPR regime.
Looking at consent as a science, the technology exists today to take the matter of consent seriously and treat consumers with the respect they deserve. Those who adapt quickly, will be better positioned to ensure that the advertising equation stays intact with the value exchange being communicated in an optimal way that is clear and transparent. Openness will undoubtedly equate to trust bringing with it loyalty and a bigger bottom line. Once you have it, hold it tight and never let it go.
For full member access to IAB Canada CMP resources please visit our Knowledge Centre.