Cross-device identity company Drawbridge confirmed it will exit its advertising business in countries connected to the European Union in response to the General Data Principal Regulation (GDPR) taking effect in May.

“In light of GDPR, we have made the decision to no longer run an advertising business in Europe,” wrote Mike Murphy, a Drawbridge spokesperson, in an email.

Murphy wrote that it means the company will likely work with local ad technology and marketing technology platforms to license its identity solution on-premise platform.

“We are in the exploratory phase with those implementations now” he wrote.

Murphy’s email referenced Drawbridge founder and CEO Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan comment in which he admitted in an earlier report that the company would exit the EU.

At least one source estimates about 20 people worked from the London office and will have an option to relocate to other locations, specifically in the U.S.

The biggest issue remains how a cookie syncs to generate one cross-device graph that connects IP addresses across different browsers and devices belonging to one individual.

The news hit the same say the Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe announced opening a GDPR transparency and consent framework for public comment. The final version is scheduled for release in mid-April.

Keith Petri, chief strategy officer at Screen6, a Drawbridge competitor based on Amsterdam, said the change would make Drawbridge’s business model look and act a lot like Screen6’s.

To become GDPR compliant, Drawbridge “would need to become a data processor that only processes the data received from clients such as DSPs, SSPs, attribution platforms, ad servers and some large publishers, for the sole purpose requested,” Petri said.  

The company doesn’t need or require the ability to sync with other cookies or other forms of data collection to provide carry out the task. This makes it easier to achieve GDPR compliance.

“It’s much more difficult for companies that co-mingle data to become GDPR compliant,” Petri said. “We think it’s more difficult to come up with the legal bases for processing the data, and more will go through a process of simplification to determine what to do with the data they collect.”

It may even facilitate consolidation, Petri said.

At least one source began speculating about a month ago that Drawbridge would exit the EU.