UK ICO "Consent or Pay" Guidance 2025: Compliance and Best Practices

The UK ICO released its "Consent or Pay" guidance on January 23, 2025. How can publishers adapt to the UK ICO's "Consent or Pay" guidance in 2025?

UK ICO "Consent or Pay" Guidance 2025: Compliance and Best Practices

Understanding "Consent or Pay" Models

The UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) defines "consent or pay" models as follows:

1. Users can consent to the use of their personal information for personalized advertising to access an online product or service.
2. Users can pay a fee to access the product or service without their personal information being used for personalized advertising.
3. Users can choose not to use the product or service.

This model aims to provide consumers with genuine choices while ensuring compliance with UK data protection laws.

Compliance with UK Data Protection Laws

According to the UK ICO, businesses implementing "consent or pay" models must ensure the following:

1. Consent must be freely given – Users should have a genuine choice and control over their data.
2. Compliance with UK GDPR and PECR – The model must align with data protection laws, including the General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR).
3. Documentation and justification – Businesses must document their assessment as part of a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) and be able to justify their compliance.

"Consent or Pay" vs. "Take It or Leave It"

A "take it or leave it" approach means that if a user does not consent to their data being used, they cannot access the service at all. This approach does not comply with the requirement for consent to be freely given under UK GDPR.

Conversely, a "consent or pay" model provides users with an alternative: either consent to personalized advertising or pay a fee for an ad-free experience. This ensures that access to the service is not solely conditional on consent.

Ensuring Compliance for the "Pay" Option

To demonstrate that consent is freely given, businesses should consider offering additional alternatives alongside the "consent or pay" model, such as:

1. Contextual advertising – Serving non-personalized ads based on content rather than user data.
2. Premium subscription tiers – Offering paid plans with enhanced features beyond just removing ads.

Key Factors for Compliance with ICO Guidance

1. Power Imbalance

Businesses must ensure users, including existing customers, have real choices for accessing the core service. If a company holds a dominant market position, it must be particularly cautious.

Risk for Small Businesses: If a business operates in a highly competitive sector with low switching costs, the risk of power imbalance is lower.

2. Appropriate Fee

The fee must be reasonable and reflect the value users place on not sharing their personal data. It should not be excessively high to coerce users into choosing the free option.

3. Equivalence of Service

Businesses must provide an equivalent core service across all options:

1. The core product or service should be the same in quality and functionality.
2. Additional benefits should not be bundled exclusively with the paid option.
3. A basic paid option should be available that does not include extra features beyond data privacy.

4. Privacy by Design

The decision-making process should be fair and transparent:

1. Equal presentation – Choices must be clearly and fairly presented.
2. Avoid dark patterns – Deceptive design tactics that manipulate users into consenting should be avoided, learn more on Avoid GDPR Dark Patterns with UniConsent CMP.
3. Clear communication – Users should easily understand their options and the implications of their choices.

Implement "Consent or Pay" with UniConsent and UniSignIn

UK publishers can activate the Ad-Free and Consent or Pay Experience using features in UniConsent and UniSignIn. This enables them to implement an ad-supported business model alongside a paid subscription option, helping to recover 10%–30% of revenue.

Ad-Free and Consent or Pay Experience

References

• ICO Guidance on Power Imbalance
• ICO Guidance on Equivalence
• ICO Case Studies on "Consent or Pay"

About UniConsent

UniConsent is a certified Consent Management Platform (CMP) by the EU IAB and IAB Canada. It is also a Google-certified CMP Partner at the Gold tier. Contact us to know more: hello@uniconsent.com