• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, April 25, 2018

IAB Europe and IAB Tech Lab Wednesday released technical specifications for a framework aimed at helping online companies comply with Europe's General Data Protection Regulation.

That privacy law, which will take effect May 25, includes new restrictions on companies' ability to collect personal data from European consumers. Among other provisions, the law will require ad companies to obtain consumers' "unambiguous consent" before using their data for ad targeting.

The Transparency & Consent Framework aims to serve as a standardized technology for notifying consumers about data collection, obtaining their consent, and informing online ad companies about that consent.

The framework will "enable the passing of selected vendor information and user consumer consent signals," the IAB Europe says in an FAQ.

The organizations state that the technology "enables the surfacing of the selected third parties’ information, the storage of a user’s choices related to those third parties and the passing of information about approved third parties, so that parties in the online advertising ecosystem understand which parties have been approved by publishers and surfaced to and approved (or consented to, where necessary) by their users."

IAB Europe and the IAB Tech Lab say the framework "is particularly relevant for 'first parties' (publishers) and other suppliers of online services, who partner with 'third parties' (vendors) to enable those third parties to process user data."