Digital Markets Act (DMA) Consent for Ad Platforms

This page describes how to provide DMA consent to ad platforms via Census.

If you are using Census to send audiences or conversion events to Google Ads, Google DV360, or Amazon Ads DSP, you’ll need to take the actions described on this page before March 2024 to avoid audience targeting from being affected.

As you may be aware, many of the large advertising services are in the process of supporting the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). Census now supports syncing DMA-related properties to the following destinations:

• Google Ads (Audiences, Conversions)

• Google Display & Video 360 (Customer Match Audiences)

• Amazon Ads DSP (Audiences)

Google and Amazon have taken different approaches to supporting DMA metadata for their networks. Google asks you to provide consent information on a per-user basis, whereas Amazon requires you to indicate which region a particular audience’s data has been collected in to determine if the DMA applies. Below, we describe how to provide this information via Census.

Google Ads

If you’re using our one-click sync experience to send audiences to Google Ads, jump ahead to the One-Click Audience Syncs section below.

When sending Audiences or Conversions to Google Ads (using our traditional sync experience) you will now see two optional fields: Consent for ad personalization and Consent for ad user data. You must provide both of these to assert the user data you are sending was collected in accordance with Google’s EU User Consent Policy.

Optional fields for providing consent to Google Ads.

Google accepts the following values for both fields: UNKNOWN, UNSPECIFIED, GRANTED, DENIED. For more info, see Google’s documentation.

There are two ways to populate these fields in Census:

1. Create two columns in your underlying data model to specify the appropriate values on a per-record basis

Specify consent via a column in your source data.

2. Use the “Constant Value” feature in Census’s field mapper to provide the same value for all records in the audience (warning: only do this if you’re confident the same value will always apply to all members of your audience)

Provide a constant value in the field mapper.

One-Click Audience Syncs (Google Ads Only)

If you’re sending audiences to Google Ads using our one-click audience sync experience, you’ll only need to provide consent status once for each underlying “person” entity.

1. Go to the “Entities” tab in Census.

2. Click on the “Person” entity powering your one-click syncs. Hint: the numbers shown below are the total count of segments and syncs, respectively, using the entity.

Select the "Person" entity powering your one-click syncs.

3. Add two additional mappings—1) Google Ads Consent for Ad Personalization and 2) Google Ads Consent for Ad User Data—and select the relevant fields in your source data. Acceptable values for these fields are: UNKNOWN, UNSPECIFIED, GRANTED, or DENIED (see Google’s documentation for more context).

Map the consent fields in your source data.

4. Click “Save Entity” in the top right to save your changes.

5. Repeat this process for any additional “Person” entities powering one-click syncs.

6. That’s it! We’ll automatically ensure these fields get passed along to Google Ads.

Google Display & Video 360

The process for providing DMA metadata to Google DV360 is nearly identical to Google Ads (see above). The only difference is that DV360 requires different values for consent status: CONSENT_STATUS_UNSPECIFIED, CONSENT_STATUS_GRANTED, CONSENT_STATUS_DENIED. For more info, see Google’s documentation.

Amazon Ads DSP

Amazon Ads has approached their DMA compliance by requiring a list of one or more country codes to be set on audiences defined in Amazon Ads DSP. These country codes indicate which countries the audience data was collected in. If the list includes any in-scope EU country, it will be subject to the regulation and potential restrictions will be applied (Amazon has not yet clarified what those are). Note that any audiences without Data Source Country information provided will be assumed to be in scope for DMA by default.

When syncing to Amazon Ads DSP Audiences with Census, you can now provide the list of countries where the included users’ data was collected. This list will be used whenever Census creates a new audience (it will not modify existing audiences).

Provide a list of country codes to Amazon.

Have Questions?

If you have any questions or need assistance, contact [e-mail].