Feature launch: Fully integrated consent management

One of our core focuses at RudderStack is compliance, specifically in how you collect user data and track users. Capturing user consent is an acute pain point, both at the point of capture and in the need to distribute user preferences to other tools in the data stack.

Today we're excited to announce that we've built a fully integrated consent solution that works with first-class consent tools like OneTrust, as well as custom-built systems.

Many consent solutions require companies to categorize their entire analytics and marketing integration setup as a marketing or advertising consent if it initializes any tools in that category. This often results in the SDK not being loaded if any integration falls into one of those categories, unnecessarily limiting the ability to track the user for other purposes (essential analytics, performance, etc.).

Our holistic approach now allows for both client-side and server-side consent categorization of each individual downstream integration. This keeps our customers compliant on a tool-by-tool basis, simplifying implementation of both internal requirements and region-specific regulatory mandates.

How we manage consent across the data lifecycle

We have multiple international enterprise customers who initially chose not to load the RudderStack SDK if consent wasn’t provided for all categories.

To ease their compliance burden, we decided it was important to provide a granular level control in which cookie and storage settings are fully configurable, and in which each downstream integration can be mapped to specific consent categories according to the needs of the geographic region and use case.

Our consent management features deliver fine-grained control of which integrations are loaded and which receive customer data based on any combination of consent preferences chosen by the user.

Tracking users pre-consent

Additionally, we noticed that many of our customers were not tracking user behavior at all until consent was provided. This causes businesses to miss out on important attribution metrics, as well as user behavior that may occur before consent is provided (or declined).

Our consent management features enable our customers to set the behavior of the SDK pre-consent—either tracking the customer as fully anonymous, tracking their sessions only, or tracking with only anonymousId as the unique identifier.

This minimizes data loss relating to attribution, acquisition, and the overall user journey.

Streamlining first-class consent integrations like OneTrust

In addition to supporting interfaces for popular consent managers (OneTrust and Ketch, with more on the way), we also added a generic consent() API to our JavaScript SDK that allows you to use your own modal or custom consent solution to interact with cookie storage options as well as integration categories—both before and after consent is provided.