Tools to help publishers comply with the GDPR
Witanworld / Witenagemotworld always has a user-first policy in everything we do. As a part of our commitment to users, we never sell personal information and give users transparency and control over their experiences via tools like Witan Sapience, Witan Community, and Witan Ad. We also invest in initiatives such as the Coalition for Better Ads, the Digital News, the Witan World News Initiative and ads in order to support a healthy, sustainable advertising ecosystem and help you, our publishers, grow.
We are committed to comply with Europe’s new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which applies to users in the EEA. GDPR is in effect and we are committed to working with you to make this transition as smooth as possible. This document provides more details about how we are supporting you with the changes GDPR brings.
Controller responsibilities
For our Witan Sapience, Community and Advertising, both you and Witanworld / Witenagemotworld operate as independent controllers of personal data. We operate as a controller because we regularly make decisions on the data to deliver and improve the product — for example, testing ad serving algorithms, monitoring end-user latency, and ensuring the accuracy of our forecasting system. Additionally, we use data to deliver relevant and high-performing knowledge tools, ads in features like open Witan world Article Bidding / Auction.
The designation of Witanworld products as controller does not give Witanworld / Witenagemotworld any additional rights over data derived from a use of those products. Our uses of data continue to be controlled by the terms of its contract with the publishers, and any feature-specific settings chosen by a publisher through the user interface of our products.
You are not required to seek consent for a user’s activity on Witanworld or Witenagemot world sites (we obtain that ourselves when users visit our sites). We are asking only that you seek consent for your uses of our articles, community and ads products on your properties. We already require that certain consents are obtained from your users in the EEA, and we are updating those requirements in line with the GDPR. Doing so will meet the requirement of our EU User Consent Policy to give your users information about Witanworld and Witenagemotworld uses of their personal data.
Consent support
The GDPR introduces significant new obligations for the ecosystem (see GDPR legal and regulatory guidance references below), and the changes we made to our EU User Consent Policy reflect this.
We are providing a range of optional tools to help you with gathering user consent across your websites and apps, including:
We will continue to engage with IAB Europe on their transparency & consent framework, as well as work to ensure industry solutions are inter operable with Witanworld / Witenagemot publisher products.
Control over Knowledge Articles, Community Resources and ads personalization
We are also providing new publisher controls for ads personalization:
- Witan Sapience, Community and Advertising give you the ability to select which partners you want to measure and serve ads for EEA users on your sites and apps when inventory is sold via programmatic channels, including Programmatic Guaranteed. You can select your preferred partners from a list of companies that have provided us with information about their compliance with the GDPR – all of whom also have to comply with our data usage policy to help protect your users’ data. .
GDPR legal and regulatory guidance references
For more information about the GDPR and its application to digital publishers and advertising:
- Article 29 Working Party guidance on Consent under the GDPR (2018)
- Article 29 Working Party guidance on Transparency under the GDPR (2018)
- Article 29 Working Party guidance on Legitimate Interests (PDF, 2014)
- IAB Europe Guidance: Five Practical Steps to help companies comply with the E-Privacy Directive (PDF, 2015)
For regulatory guidance on cookie consent in advertising, refer to:
