<b>What's a consent string and why does my advertiser want it?</b>

<b>What's a consent string and why does my advertiser want it?</b>

Q: My network suddenly requires a "consent string" in the postback. What is that?

A: A consent string is a compact, encoded record of exactly what a user agreed to when a cookie banner appeared — which vendors, which purposes, yes or no. In the EU framework it follows a standardized format from the industry transparency framework, so any partner can decode it the same way.

Why it suddenly matters to your advertiser:

— Legal cover: if a regulator asks "on what basis did you process this user?", the string is the receipt.
— Liability shift: by requiring it from you, the advertiser documents that consent was collected before their pixel fired.
— Vendor demands: ad platforms increasingly refuse traffic without a valid string attached.

For you it means the consent has to be real and captured before tracking, not invented downstream. A malformed or all-yes string from a source that never showed a banner is worse than none — it's evidence of a violation.

Short version: it's the encoded proof of what the user agreed to. Collect real consent up front and pass the genuine string through.

Still stuck? Drop your case in the comments.