Consent
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What is consent mode?
Consent mode is a privacy feature that allows websites to respect a user's consent status in relation to Cookies or App identifiers.
It has been designed due to the requirement for web users to have more control of their data whilst using the internet by requiring advertisers to obtain explicit consent for cookie placement. In response to this, Google released a new privacy feature for its suite of products; Google Consent Mode.
This ensures the ability to measure conversions whilst respecting visitors' privacy preferences. Other companies are in the process of introducing their own versions of consent, but they all work off the same basic framework.
A new approach
Consent mode offers innovative solutions to webmasters, balancing user privacy with a website's need for effective marketing strategies and attribution.
Google has implemented two new cookie storage methods; one for analytics software (analytics_storage) and one for advertising (ad_storage) empowering trackers to adapt based on a user's cookie choices.
When users grant consent via the cookie consent banner, it's straightforward to map their data for conversion events and analytics properties. However, when consent is not given, Google uses cookieless pings to pass through key events and a behavioural modelling process to estimate visitor behaviour.
This graphic shows the different states.
How consent mode works
Consent modes primary goal is to obtain users consent method
Consent mode v1 (or beta) introduced two storage methods to process data on different consent types:
Ad_storage: Enables storage such as cookies (web) or app identifiers (apps) related to advertising.
Analytics_storage: Enables storage such as cookies (web) or app identifiers (apps) related to analytics, such as session duration
Consent mode v2 adds two additional consent types that informs the network whether the user agrees to ad personalisation such as audience building or remarketing campaigns:
Ad_personalisation: Sets consent for personlised advertising
Ad_user_data: Sets consent for sending user data to networks for online advertising purposes
Advanced consent vs basic consent
Advanced consent mode was introduced in Googles v2 roll-out. The primary difference from basic consent mode is that it gives marketers access to key event data using cookieless pings from users that did not consent.
In Advanced consent, Tags are loaded before a user interacts with the cookieless consent banner. These transmit cookieless signals back to the analytics software, even when a user does not consent. Google will not read or write cookies on the users browser or have access to any personal identifiable information.
Basic consent does not load any tags by default and will only transmit data after a user has interacted with the cookie consent banner.
*When tags are blocked due to consent choices, no data is collected, and conversion modeling in Ads is based on a general model.
Advantages and disadvantages of consent
Advantages
Compliant with EU Cookie Policy
Respecting users privacy
Still have some data with consent v2s Cookieless pings and Behavioral modeling
Disadvantages
Losing a % of attribution for all marketing channels
Non Google consent
When users grant consent via the cookie consent banner, it's straightforward to map their data for conversion events and analytics properties. However, when consent is not given, Google uses cookieless pings to pass through key events and a behavioural modelling process to estimate visitor behaviour.
Whilst Google has pioneered consent in the EU market, other companies also require the basic consent implementation of asking a user to accept/ deny cookies and not firing tracking if access is denied.