Consents and Preferences data type

The Consent for Privacy, Personalization and Marketing Preferences data type (hereinafter referred to as the “Consents and Preferences data type”) is an Experience Data Model (XDM) data type that is intended to support the collection of customer permissions and preferences generated by Consent Management Platforms (CMPs) and other sources from your data operations.

This document covers the structure and intended use of the fields provided by the Consents and Preferences data type.

Prerequisites prerequisites

This document requires a working understanding of XDM and the use of the schemas in Experience Platform. Please review the following documentation before continuing:

Data type structure structure

The Consents and Preferences data type provides several fields used to capture consent and preference information.

A consent is an option that allows a customer to specify how their data may be used. Most consents have a legal aspect, in that some jurisdictions require obtaining permission before data can be used in a particular way, or require that the customer has an option to stop that use (opt out) if affirmative consent is not required.

A preference is an option that allows the customer to specify how different aspects of their experience with a brand should be handled. These fall within two categories:

The following screenshot shows how the structure of the data type is represented in the Platform UI:

The following JSON shows an example of the type of data that the Consents and Preferences data type can process. Information on the specific use of each of these fields is provided in the sections that follow.

{
  "consents": {
    "collect": {
      "val": "VI",
    },
    "adID": {
      "idType": "IDFA",
      "val": "y"
    },
    "share": {
      "val": "y",
    },
    "personalize": {
      "content": {
        "val": "y"
      }
    },
    "marketing": {
      "preferred": "email",
      "any": {
        "val": "u"
      },
      "push": {
        "val": "n",
        "reason": "Too Frequent",
        "time": "2019-01-01T15:52:25+00:00"
      }
    },
    "metadata": {
      "time": "2019-01-01T15:52:25+00:00"
    }
  }
}

consents choices

consents contains several fields that describe a customer’s consents and preferences. These fields are described in further detail in the subsections below.

"consents": {
  "collect": {
    "val": "VI",
  },
  "adID": {
    "idType": "IDFA",
    "val": "y"
  },
  "share": {
    "val": "y",
  },
  "personalize": {
    "content": {
      "val": "y"
    }
  },
  "marketing": {
    "preferred": "email",
    "any": {
      "val": "u"
    },
    "email": {
      "val": "n",
      "reason": "Too Frequent",
      "time": "2019-01-01T15:52:25+00:00"
    }
  }
}

collect

collect represents the customer’s consent for having their data collected.

"collect": {
  "val": "y"
}

adID

adID represents the customer’s consent for whether an advertiser ID can be used to link the customer across apps on this device.

"adID": {
  "idType": "IDFA",
  "val": "y"
}

share

share represents the customer’s consent for whether their data can be shared with (or sold to) second or third parties.

"share": {
  "val": "y"
}

personalize personalize

personalize captures customer preferences regarding which ways their data can be used for personalization. Customers can opt out of specific personalization use cases, or opt out of personalization entirely.

"personalize": {
  "content": {
    "val": "y",
  }
}

marketing marketing

marketing captures customer preferences regarding what marketing purposes their data can be used for. Customers can opt out of specific marketing use cases, or opt out of direct marketing entirely.

"marketing": {
  "preferred": "email",
  "any": {
    "val": "u"
  },
  "email": {
    "val": "n",
    "reason": "Too Frequent"
  },
  "push": {
    "val": "y"
  },
  "sms": {
    "val": "y"
  }
}

metadata

metadata captures general metadata about the customer’s consents and preferences whenever they were last updated.

"metadata": {
  "time": "2019-01-01T15:52:25+00:00",
}

Ingesting data using the data type ingest

In order to use the Consents and Preferences data type to ingest consent data from your customers, you must create a dataset based on a schema that contains that data type.

See the tutorial on creating a schema in the UI for steps on how to assign data types to fields. Once you have created a schema containing a field with the Consents and Preferences data type, refer to the section on creating a dataset in the dataset user guide, following the steps to create a dataset with an existing schema.

Handling consent and preference changes

When a customer changes their consents or preferences on your website, these changes should be collected and immediately enforced using the Adobe Experience Platform Web SDK. If a customer opts out of data collection, all data collection must immediately cease. If a customer opts out of personalization, then there should be no personalization present on the next page they visit.

Appendix appendix

The sections below provide additional reference information regarding the Consents and Preferences data type.

Accepted values for val choice-values

The following table outlines the accepted values for val:

Accepted values for preferred preferred-values

The following table outlines the accepted values for preferred. The preferred values indicate the customer’s preferred channel for receiving communications that would inform them about data collection, privacy policies, and personalization options.

Full Consents and Preferences schema full-schema

To view the full schema for the Consents and Preferences data type, refer to the official XDM repository.