The IAB Multi-State Privacy Agreement (MSPA) is a framework designed to help advertisers, publishers, agencies, and technology vendors follow new privacy laws that are effective in five US states (California, Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, and Utah). The MSPA will be updated to include additional state privacy laws that will come into effect between 2024 and 2026.
Adform is a signatory of the MSPA. The MSPA acts as a contract that establishes a relationship between all parties involved when personal information is shared for delivering digital ads. By signing the MSPA, all parties agree to a clear and consistent set of privacy terms. These terms supplement existing commercial contracts. Where no commercial contracts exist, the MSPA provides the baseline set of privacy terms required by law. Adform encourages you to become a signatory of the MSPA.
The MSPA is aligned with the IAB Tech Lab's Global Privacy Platform (GPP), a standard framework designed for privacy, consent, and consumer choice information sharing between websites, apps, and technology vendors. The GPP communicates a user's consent preferences to technology vendors, who then determine how to process the user's data based on those preferences.
Note
To better understand data privacy regulations, see Adform Academy course Understand Evolving Privacy Regulations.
The MSPA signal is a piece of data that publishers or advertisers use to communicate a user's consent preferences to technology vendors, and it's only valid if it is sent by a publisher or advertiser who has signed the MSPA. The signal contains information about the user's consent status for each state whose privacy laws the MSPA applies to. To generate an MSPA signal, publishers or advertisers use Consent Management Provider (CMP) that supports MSPA generation within Global Privacy Platform (GPP). For more information about the GPP signaling process, see Learn About Global Privacy Platform.
An MSPA signal contains various fields, each serving a specific purpose for different technology vendors. In the table below, refer to the "Applies to Adform" field to see if a specific field is relevant to Adform.
|
Field Name |
Description |
|---|---|
|
Version |
The version of this section specification used to encode the string |
|
SaleOptOut |
Opt-out of the sales of consumer's personal data |
|
SharingOptOut |
Opt-out of the personal data sharing |
|
TargetedAdvertisingOptOut |
Opt-out of the personal data processing for targeted advertising |
|
MSPACoveredTransaction |
Publisher or advertiser, as applicable, is a signatory to the IAB MSPA, as may be amended from time to time, and declares that the transaction is a “Covered Transaction” as defined in the MSPA |
|
MspaOptOutOptionMode |
Publisher or advertiser, as applicable, has enabled “Opt-Out Option Mode” for the “Covered Transaction,” as such terms are defined in the MSPA |
|
MspaServiceProviderMode |
Publisher or advertiser, as applicable, has enabled “Service Provider Mode” for the “Covered Transaction,” as such terms are defined in the MSPA |
For transactions covered by the MSPA, publishers and advertisers can choose to operate in two modes:
-
Service Provider Mode: Signatories that don't sell, share, or process personal information for targeted advertising.
-
Opt-Out Option Mode: Signatories that may engage in those activities.
Different data processing activities for digital advertising are allowed under the MSPA depending on what mode is being used and a consumer’s opt-out choices, as illustrated by this decision tree.