The Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF) is an industry standard developed by IAB Europe that establishes a common language for communicating user consent and privacy preferences in digital advertising. It defines how publishers, consent management platforms (CMPs), and demand partners collect, store, and pass along user consent signals in a standardized way.
Why does TCF matter for publishers?
TCF exists to help publishers comply with privacy regulations like GDPR and ePrivacy by ensuring that consent collected from your users is communicated consistently across your entire advertising stack. When a user interacts with a consent banner on your site, TCF governs how that choice is encoded and passed downstream to SSPs, DSPs, and other ad tech vendors — including Sovrn.
How does TCF work?
When a user makes a consent decision on your site, a compliant CMP encodes that decision into a TC string (Transparency and Consent string). This string travels with the bid request and tells demand partners which purposes the user has consented to — such as personalized advertising, measurement, or content delivery. Vendors registered with IAB Europe's Global Vendor List (GVL) can read this string and act on it accordingly.
What versions of TCF are in use?
IAB Europe has released two major versions of the framework. TCF v2.x is the current standard and introduced more granular consent and legitimate interest signals compared to the original version. Sovrn supports TCF v2.3.
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