About the Series

You’re reading the Ad Tech Stack Build vs. Buy Series, the only series on the internet that dives deep into every piece of the publisher ad tech puzzle with insight from real industry experts.

Today’s featured expert is Noah Forster, a 10-year Playwire veteran who is now our Senior Vice President, Product. Noah brings a wealth of unparalleled knowledge and experience to this discussion of consent management platforms (CMPs) for publishers.

Check out all the blogs in this series.

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The Essential, Troublesome Task of Consent Management for Publishers

Consent management is not something publishers can afford to ignore. You have to comply with privacy laws like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and consent management is how you do that.

But it’s not just about compliance. It’s also about data. You need to follow the law, sure, but you also need as many users as possible to consent to you capturing data about them. Why? Because that’s how you offer targeted campaigns to advertisers, and those are the campaigns that advertisers pay big money for. Unfortunately, consent management can mean a lot of work, particularly if you don’t give some thought to your choice of CMP.

Keep in mind that consent management is not an on-off switch, in which you have it or you don’t. There are degrees of effectiveness here, as well as different ways to implement consent management. That’s exactly what we explore below. Read on.

If you’re looking for a CMP, you can stop reading right here. Playwire handles consent management for publishers for free. It’s part of our holistic approach to revenue amplification. Contact us to learn more.

You Have Three Consent Management Options

The whole “build vs. buy” approach makes it sound like you have two CMP options, but you actually have three:

  1. Build your own CMP from scratch.
  2. Pay for a third-party CMP platform.
  3. Get a managed CMP for free as part of a comprehensive revenue management solution.

Each of those options comes with some important considerations, pros and cons that will vary from publisher to publisher.

Which CMP Option Is Best?

So, which consent management solution is best for you? Below, we examine each of your three options through the lens of the most important CMP considerations. 

Staying Compliant

If your chosen solution for consent management doesn’t keep you compliant with applicable privacy laws, it’s not a good solution. In fact, it’s no better than no solution at all if you find yourself in legal trouble because of it.

Building your own CMP allows you to oversee every aspect of compliance with current law, given that you can understand all the legalese involved. But what happens when the law changes? Online privacy laws are popping up all over the world at break-neck pace — will you have the time and resources to update your DIY CMP every time there’s a small change in privacy laws?

The best third-party CMPs will have teams dedicated to staying on top of compliance. As long as you are sure that your chosen platform is really on top of consent management laws, this can be a viable option. But you have to be sure.

We can’t speak for other publisher revenue partners, but we can speak for ourselves as a partner that includes consent management in our offerings. We are constantly monitoring the law for changes that can affect our publishers, and when we find one, we implement system-wide updates that make sure our publishers are 100% in compliance at all times.

Encouraging Data Capture

The discussion about CMPs often focuses so much on legal compliance that it forgets the business aspect of consent management. Here it is: The more data you can convince your users to let you gather, the more money you stand to make. That’s because you can use that data to offer targeted campaigns to advertisers — a guarantee that they will reach who they really want to reach. That means you can charge more and your CPMs will be higher.

Don’t get us wrong, the benefits aren’t just to one group. Publishers, audiences, and advertisers alike all benefit from consented data:

Publisher Benefits:

  • Higher revenue
  • Higher quality ads, and a better user experience for your audience over non-personalized or irrelevant ads

Audience Benefits:

  • Reduces irrelevant advertising since ads are tailored to their personalized interests and shopping habits.
  • Allows audience to discover new products
  • Makes online searching and shopping faster and easier

Advertiser benefits:

  • Better conversion
  • Brand affinity
  • Engagement

Building your own CMP lets you control all aspects of its use. As long as you stay within IAB Europe’s GDPR guidelines (and any other applicable guidelines that may be released), you can control the way you present the messaging around consent. If you’re a talented copywriter and conversion expert, you can convince your users to safely share their data.

Third-party CMPs are hit and miss in this regard. Many are focused primarily on legal compliance and let the promotion of data capture fall by the wayside. If you’re working with a comprehensive revenue partner like Playwire, however, they have a stake in your users allowing themselves to be tracked, so they will engineer a solution that encourages data capture. And you get the benefits of that.

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Development and Integration

When you put building your own CMP up against the two ready-made options, there’s no comparison: The DIY approach involves a lot more development and integration work. The conversation gets trickier when you start comparing third-party CMPs to solutions like Playwire, though.

Most third-party CMPs will require you to use their dashboard or interface to oversee consent management on your web properties. For some publishers, that’s not too much to ask. But the Playwire route is far easier: We just ask you to place a snippet of code on your site, and we take care of everything else. 

Leveraging Data

What will you do with the data you capture? The idea is to use it to drive your CPMs higher. If you build your own CMP, will you know how to do that? Some of the third-party solutions have data management baked in, but that isn’t always standard, and it often requires you to operate within their ad tech ecosystem.

Here again, Playwire comes out on top in the build vs. buy debate. We manage your data by blending it with the massive data bank we have created from our publisher network. You get access to massive scale, leverage your data for maximum CPMs and never lift a finger.

CMP Cost

This one’s easy. Playwire’s solution is free. As part of our holistic revenue management approach, we take a small cut of the revenue we bring in for you, but we never charge you for consent management.

Third-party CMPs cost money. How much depends on the platform you go with, but you can easily spend thousands per month on these solutions. Then, you have the DIY approach, which is far and away the most expensive. Building your own CMP requires developers, and developers are paid handsomely.

Get the Best Consent Management Solution for Free

As it turns out, the best CMP solution is also the easiest to manage and most affordable. It’s Playwire. We take care of consent management and so much more for publishers who want to increase their revenue. We do it all for you, and it’s free as part of our revenue amplification services.

If that sounds pretty good to you, you’re not alone. Join the countless publishers who have seen their revenue skyrocket thanks to a partnership with Playwire. To get started, all you have to do is contact us.

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