What Is IAB TCF?

The IAB Transparency & Consent Framework (TCF) is a standardized technical framework, maintained by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, that lets a CMP communicate a visitor's consent choices to hundreds of ad-tech vendors in a single, consistent format, a consent string, instead of each vendor needing a custom integration.

Before a common standard existed, a publisher’s CMP needed a bespoke integration with every ad-tech partner it worked with. TCF solves that by defining one consent string format any registered vendor can read. It’s widely used in programmatic advertising, and it’s a European-market standard first: most consent implementations built around US laws like CCPA or CIPA (California Invasion of Privacy Act) don’t use TCF at all, a common point of confusion for teams operating across both regions.