What is a vendor in IAB?

In IAB Europe’s Transparency & Consent Framework (TCF), a vendor is a participating company that accesses users’ devices or processes their personal data to provide advertising, measurement or other services on a publisher’s website or app. Examples include ad servers and advertising platforms. Vendors register on the Global Vendor List, receive a vendor ID and declare their processing purposes, legal bases, data categories and retention periods.

A consent management platform (CMP) presents these disclosures and communicates users’ consent and objection choices through TCF signals. Vendors must respect those signals and obtain consent wherever required. A vendor may be a data controller, a processor or both, depending on its activities. TCF registration does not itself certify GDPR compliance.