Wondering what consent management platforms are and the best ones out there in the market? Read on to know what exactly CMPs do, how they are essential in a privacy-first world, and the top 10 consent management platforms that will help you manage your consent processes easily.
What is a consent management platform?
Ever noticed a cookie pop-up banner that asks you for your consent for collecting user data every time you visit a new website?
Chances are—you have.
Data privacy, especially in the tech world, is becoming a growing concern for companies. As users demand more protection of their data, laws and regulations such as the GDPR, LGPD, and CCPA ensure that data collection is compliant and does not infringe on user privacy.
This is where consent management platforms fit into the user privacy equation.
A consent management platform helps companies comply with data privacy regulations, legally document the same for audit purposes, and simplify management of user consent processes for all customer-facing channels.
Why are consent management platforms essential?
Okay—we now know that user data collection can get complicated and therefore warrants the need for a dedicated management platform. But what exactly does a consent management platform do?
Let’s take a closer look.
A consent management platform helps companies
- Show consent management banners and pop-ups for cookies/user data collection
- Stores users’ consent preferences in a central consent repository
- Tracks all user consent preferences & makes relevant updates should a user choose to opt-out
- Give complete visibility into user data collection for audit purposes
- Prompts/prevents tags used in marketing and advertising channels based on user consent choices
What are the two types of consent management platforms?
- Standalone consent management platforms: Standalone consent management systems offer specific consent management-related solutions. Since they are particular to a specific consent gathering context (it could be on a specific platform or for specific data-handling tools), a dedicated team will set these CMPs up with your already-existing marketing analytics or data-handling software.
- Integrated consent management platforms: These are fully-integrated, one-stop platforms where all tasks relating to consent collection/management as well as user data handling can be done. This makes for greater efficiency as well as ease of use as everything is in a single place.
Choosing the right consent management platform: our Top 10
Osano
Osano considers itself to be the most popular consent management software out there in the market—and rightly so.
They offer a fully-integrated consent management platform with a whole host of standout features, much like a comprehensive data compliance solution in a box.
Some of the features that helps differentiate them from the rest of the market include:
- Easy and instant compliance with privacy regulations in different parts of the world—in almost 42 languages
- Scalable data subject rights management to track and record every inbound request, make retrieval of data in time fast and easy, as mandated by the law
- A dedicated Osano GDPR representative for companies that have to fully comply with GDPR user privacy practices
- PII tracking API to incorporate privacy directly into your app and maintain a clear record of each piece of data stored and shared
- Policy change detection to understand any changes in privacy regulation laws
- Database of privacy ratings of 14,000 companies to understand and contextualise your privacy practices
CookieHub
If you’re looking for a more cookie-focused consent management platform, CookieHub does a good job for showing, recording, and tracking all user cookie consent preferences.
Here are some of CookieHub’s key features as a cookie consent solution:
- Show automated cookie declaration forms and have CookieHub’s cookie scanner check your domain for cookies already in use
- CookieHub is both GDPR as well as CCPA compliant
- Scope of customization is vast for the cookie consent banners shown to users on your domain
- Easily to implement Google Tag Manager integration with CookieHub
- A ready-to-use CookieHub WordPress plugin for collecting and managing cookie collection from your blog content
CookieYes
CookieYes is another cookie consent management platform that allows you to record your domain visitors’ cookie preferences and manage cookie compliance in one place.
Here are some of their differentiating features:
- Display a fully-customizable cookie consent form/banner on your domain for users
- Automatic script blocking for cookie consent purposes and prevent tags from firing
- Maintenance of historical consent logs
- Easy to set up integrations with multiple platforms
TrustArc
TrustArc is a more detailed and wider-in-scope privacy management solution for businesses. Consent management software, PII identification, cookie consent tracking, and policy management are some of the solutions that fall within the larger privacy management platform that they offer.
Features that make TrustArc standout:
- Enterprise-tier and scalable privacy management solution
- Research on demand for specific privacy-related compliance with regulations
- Audit and compliance-related legal consultations for all privacy management concerns
- Easily understand updates and changes to privacy regulation with TrustArc’s advanced AI
CookieBot
CookieBot is a solely cookie-focused consent compliance management platform. They do this through three core functionalities offered as part of their solution: cookie consent recording, cookie monitoring, and cookie control.
The first allows you to display and record cookie preferences of your website users, monitoring allows you to keep a close tab on all recorded cookie consent data, and the latter lets you automatically block all cookie collection until the user opts-in.
Some of CookieBot’s important features:
- Highly customizable consent interface between your domain and the end-user
- Do consent audits once a month through completely automated cookie consent reports
- Real-time geo targeting
- Easy to deploy on your website with a few lines of code
PiwikPro
PiwikPro is a larger data management solution that provides a consent management platform as a product as well. Their main products include customer analytics, a customer data platform, tag manager and finally—a consent manager too.
Their consent management solution stands out with the following key features:
- Easy and transparent consent compliance for building trust with website users and potential customers
- Analytics to optimise consent opt-in ratio
- Easy configuration and set-up with a few lines of code
- Fully customizable consent banner that is displayed to users on your domain
Usercentrics
Usercentrics is a consent management solution for both websites as well as apps. The platform allows you to obtain consent, manage & track all recorded consents, and even optimise consent collection methods.
Some of the features that differentiate them from the rest of the consent management tools in the market:
- Free data privacy audit for your website on the basis of requirement by regulations such as GDPR, CCPA, POPIA, and LGPD.
- Analytics for detailed look at current consent collection practices and identifying areas of optimization
- Integrations with a range of widely used software applications and platforms
OneTrust
OneTrust offers a consent management platform under the larger umbrella of a privacy management and data governance solution. The solution allows you to ensure regulatory compliance, privacy risk management as well as trusted data use across your entire business or organisation.
Here are some of its main features:
- A comprehensive and all-in-one platform for consent and preference management requirements
- Ensure a privacy-first approach to consent collection whilst also allowing businesses to provide a personalised consumer experience
- Integrations with commonly used software tools and applications
Quantcast
Quantcast is a free-to-use consent management platform that offers all consent-collection and tracking-related functionalities but is limited in scope when it comes to more advanced features of other consent management platforms in the market.
With Quantcast, you can:
- Ensure that your consent collection and management practices are in compliance with GDPR and CCPA
- Use a consent management solution that is built with the Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF v2.0) created by IAB Europe in mind
Secure Privacy
Secure Privacy markets itself as an easy-to-set-up and secure consent management solution that offers compliance across a range of international data privacy regulations.
Here are some of their differentiating functionalities and features as a consent management platform:
- Wide array of integrations with content management platforms for ensuring compliance at different user touchpoints
- Ability to create fully customizable and on-brand cookie consent banners on your domain
- Continuous and automated website and cookie scanning for your website
That’s about the 10 best consent management platforms—choose your CMP based on what fits your bill
As an organisation or business that has a dedicated website collecting user data and preferences—it’s more important than ever to ensure compliance with stipulated data privacy regulations. Not doing so can lead to expensive non-compliance penalties and litigation that can be an unnecessary drain on your company finances.
Keeping the above in mind, it’s absolutely essential for you to invest in a consent management platform that is the right fit for your needs. We hope this guide has given you a proper look into various consent management solutions in the market and their differentiating factors—so that you can make an informed choice yourself.
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Nvard
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