IAB TCF 2.4 Deadline and How to Check Your Vendors

IAB Europe has released version 2.4 of the Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF), the standard most publishers in Europe use to collect consent for advertising and pass it on to their ad tech partners. If you run ads or measurement on a website or app with EU or UK traffic, it applies to you.

Your visitors won't be asked to consent again, and the consent you have already collected stays valid. One change can affect a small group of ad tech vendors though, so it's worth a quick check before the deadline.

IAB TCF 2.4 Deadline and How to Check Your Vendors

Deadlines

Where	Deadline
Websites	October 23, 2026
Mobile apps and CTV	February 23, 2027

The new rules were published on July 23, 2026, together with IAB Europe's updated TCF Policies (version 5.0.b).

What changes for publishers and marketers

Most of TCF 2.4 is about making the consent screen easier for your visitors to understand. The second layer, where visitors see the detail behind each choice, now explains more clearly what "Features" are: ways that data is processed, only ever used for purposes the visitor already has a choice over. One item has also been renamed, to "Identify devices based on information actively requested".

None of this needs any action from you if your consent platform keeps its texts up to date.

The change that matters for your revenue and reporting is about a small group of vendors. Some ad tech companies only process data for reasons users can't refuse, such as keeping ads safe from malware, preventing ad fraud, fixing errors and delivering ads. The IAB calls these Special Purposes.

Until now, the consent signal marked these vendors with a "legitimate interest" flag so they knew they had been shown to your visitors. TCF 2.4 removes that flag for them. Instead, they rely on the list of vendors shown to the visitor, which has been part of every consent signal since TCF 2.3.

Vendors that have updated their technology won't notice a thing. A vendor that still looks for the old flag may think it isn't allowed to run. If that happens, you could lose ad security scanning, fraud protection or reporting from that vendor, most likely for visitors who reject consent or haven't made a choice yet.

For all other vendors, the ones that ask your visitors for consent, nothing changes.

Vendors that may be affected

These are the 22 vendors on the IAB's vendor list (September 2026) that only use Special Purposes. Being on this list doesn't mean a vendor will stop working. It means they are the ones to check with.

Vendor ID	Vendor	What they do it for
56	Confiant Inc.	Security and fraud prevention, Ad and content delivery
205	Adssets AB	Ad and content delivery
415	Seenthis AB	Ad and content delivery
572	CHEQ AI TECHNOLOGIES	Security and fraud prevention, Ad and content delivery
597	Adjust Digital A/S	Ad and content delivery
950	Stream Eye OOD	Ad and content delivery
1044	TMT Digital Inc	Security and fraud prevention
1129	Brandhouse/Subsero A/S	Security and fraud prevention, Ad and content delivery
1160	streaMonkey GmbH	Security and fraud prevention, Ad and content delivery
1187	AccountInsight Ltd	Security and fraud prevention, Ad and content delivery, Saving privacy choices
1225	Dando online LTD	Security and fraud prevention, Ad and content delivery
1362	9 Dots Media Ltd	Security and fraud prevention, Ad and content delivery, Saving privacy choices
1376	Carbonatix LTD	Ad and content delivery
1395	Marketing Science Consulting Group, Inc.	Security and fraud prevention
1404	Sahar Media FZE	Ad and content delivery
1451	Accenture Song Brand Germany GmbH	Ad and content delivery
1468	OnCore Digital Media	Ad and content delivery
1516	Peer39	Security and fraud prevention
1538	Coresibo LTD (DBA Tredio)	Security and fraud prevention, Ad and content delivery, Saving privacy choices
1568	Bannerwise	Ad and content delivery
1584	DSR Agency GmbH	Security and fraud prevention, Ad and content delivery
1614	Ad Insertion platform Sarl	Security and fraud prevention, Ad and content delivery, Saving privacy choices

The IAB list changes every week, so also check the vendors selected in your UniConsent dashboard.

What UniConsent does for you

On websites, UniConsent is updated automatically for IAB TCF 2.4, as it was for TCF 2.3. There is nothing to reinstall, no settings to change, and your visitors won't be asked to consent again. The consent signal your ad partners receive follows the new rules, and the consent screen shows the new wording in every language it supports.

In mobile apps, the UniConsent consent screen is updated in the same way. If your developers built their own first consent screen and use the UniConsent SDK only to save the choice, ask them to update to SDK version 26.9.0 (iOS, Android, Flutter or React Native) before February 23, 2027.

How to check your vendors still work

Do these checks once the update is live, and again a week later.

1. Compare the vendors in your UniConsent dashboard with the table above. If you don't use any of them, you're done.
2. Install the free Consent Data Validator Chrome extension, open your website, make a choice in the cookie banner and copy the IAB TCF consent string from the extension.
3. Paste it into the IAB TCF String Decoder. Each of your vendors from step 1 should appear under Vendors Disclosed. It's expected that they no longer appear under Vendor Legitimate Interest.
4. Repeat once after clicking Accept All and once after Reject All.

Then ask your account manager at each of these vendors one question: "Does your technology use the Vendors Disclosed list in the TCF consent string for Special Purpose processing?" If the answer is no, ask when they will update.

Finally, watch the vendor's own dashboard for the first week after the deadline and compare it with the week before. That means blocked ads for an ad security vendor, fraud rates for a fraud prevention vendor, or impressions for an ad delivery vendor. A sudden drop, especially among visitors who rejected consent, is the sign to follow up.

If you're not sure about a vendor on your site or in your app, email us at hello@uniconsent.com and we'll check it with you.

References

• IAB Europe Transparency and Consent Framework
• IAB Tech Lab TCF specifications

About UniConsent

UniConsent is a part of Transfon's privacy-first User Experience Platform serves tens of millions of users per day to provide a seamless privacy experience for both users and publishers in the age of post GDPR. Contact us to know more: hello@uniconsent.com