GDPR: Google to demand that publishers gain consent from users on its behalf when using Google's ad technology

Google has requested that web publishers gain consent on its behalf to gather personal information on European users and target ads at them using Google's systems.

Google is one of the biggest advertising companies in the world, posting revenues of $95.4 billon in advertising in 2017 - a sum that counts for 85 per cent of parent company Alphabet's overall revenues of $110.9bn in that year. Its advertising products include DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP), DoubleClick Ad Exchange (AdX), AdMob, and AdSense.

With the incoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), coming into force across the European Union on 25 May, companies are required to obtain individual consent to gather people's personal details, while also being more transparent about how that data will be used. Failure to comply can lead to fines as much as four per cent of global revenue.

Therefore, as the Wall Street Journal first reported, Google has rewritten its EU user consent policy and will update the contractual terms for its advertising products. WSJ sources suggest Google will imminently announce its steps towards compliance for its ad-technology platforms.

The company will nevertheless be gathering consent directly from users for data usage on its own platforms, such as Google.com, Gmail and YouTube, but it wants publishers to be responsible for obtaining consent for third-party websites and apps that rely on Google's ad technology to sell ads.

Google could also offer non-personalised ads to users who don't consent to their data being used for ad-targeting, a WSJ source suggested, but these won't be nearly so profitable for the company.

The move could further complicate an already complex project for companies trying to comply with GDPR. However, Google has suggested that publishers and advertisers that use its advertising technology are already required under existing EU law to get consent from users to its services - GDPR has merely refined these requirements further, it argues