TPE #78: How to set up Consent Mode V2 [step-by-step guide]
Jan 29, 2024Read time: 5 minutes
What’s up guys — Miles here!
There’s a lot of buzz around Google Consent Mode V2 at the moment…
So we decided to share a step-by-step guide that you can use to implement it with Google Tag Manager.
We’ve only shared this guide with members of The PPC Hub, and students of our Google Ads Masterclass & Conversion Tracking Mastery courses.
But since there is a major deadline coming up (March 2024), we decided to share it with you too — because we appreciate you as a PPC Edge subscriber.
But before we give it to you, we’ll start with a little bit of context on why you MUST set up Consent Mode V2 before March.
Ready for it? Let’s dive in!
A quick recap of what’s going on with privacy regulations…
New privacy regulations are going to be enforced and regulated in March 2024.
I won’t bore you with the specifics, but the Digital Markets Act (DMA) states that large advertising platforms like Google and Meta are responsible for collecting user consent in order to run their advertising services.
In response to the DMA, Google is making it mandatory for advertisers to use Consent Mode V2. That way, Google knows whether a user gave consent to track them or not (from their cookie banner). Google will then adjust tags and tracking to respect users’ choices.
These regulations apply to all users in the European Economic Area (EEA).
What does the “V2” mean in Consent Mode V2?
Google Consent Mode has been around for a few years.
Consent Mode V2 contains 2 new variables that you need to set up:
- ad_user_data (tells Google whether a user has ‘granted’ or ‘denied’ consent to track advertising cookies).
- ad_personalization (tells Google whether a user has ‘granted’ or ‘denied’ consent to use personalized information for remarketing and other purposes).
That’s all really in terms of what’s new in “V2”.
In order to comply with local regulations, you MUST implement Consent Mode V2.
If you don’t implement Consent Mode V2, you put yourself at risk:
- You risk getting fined if you don’t comply with EEA regulations.
- You risk losing valuable conversion tracking data when users don’t give consent.
- You risk losing the ability to build audience/remarketing lists.
- You risk losing the option to show personalized ads.
You need to implement (Advanced) Consent Mode V2 to comply AND track more data that would have otherwise been lost:
- Comply with EEA regulations.
- Prevent significant data losses when users don’t give tracking consent.
- Consent Mode automatically adjusts how your tags behave based on the cookie consent status of your users.
- Using consent signals, Google uses Conversion Modeling to recover lost conversions from users who didn’t consent to ads cookies.
- With Consent Mode V2, you can still build audiences in the EEA region.
Implementing Consent Mode V2 is no longer optional — it’s an absolute must if you have users from the EEA region!
FAQ: “my business is based in the US (or another country outside the EEA region): do I still need to implement Consent Mode V2?”
This is probably the number 1 question I get about Consent Mode V2:
“I’m based in [other country than EEA], should I also implement Consent Mode V2?”
The answer is YES (unless you have 0 users from the EEA)!
The privacy regulations are based on the USER location, not the business location.
Read that again…
So if you want to prevent all the risks/issues we mentioned above, you need to implement Consent Mode V2.
At bare minimum, you do it to comply with local privacy regulations (so you don’t get fined).
But… You also do it to recover lost conversions, prevent data losses when users don’t give consent, and to continue building audience/remarketing lists.
Should you use region-specific consent banners?
Many regions (countries or even states) have different regulations.
For instance: “California’s CCPA does not require businesses to gain opt-in consent for cookies, but it requires businesses to disclose that cookies are used, and the data is collected by cookies and their purposes” (source: Cookieyes)
With a tool like Cookiebot, you can set up region-specific banners:
That might be a good solution if you don’t want to use the strict EEA consent banner for users outside of that region.
Full disclosure: this is not legal advice, and we haven’t experimented with this feature yet but it might offer the perfect solution if you want to use different consent banners in different regions.
How to implement Consent Mode V2 [step-by-step guide]
Alright, you’re fully up to speed on WHY you need to implement Consent Mode V2…
But HOW do you actually do it?
Great question, glad you asked! ;-).
We created a free step-by-step guide to help you easily set up Consent Mode V2 with Cookiebot CMP and Google Tag Manager.
I hope it’s valuable.
⚠️ You need to have Consent Mode V2 in place BEFORE MARCH 2024 or you’re gonna GET REKT.
The March 2024 deadline is coming up!
Without it, you are gonna get rekt…
So don’t wait too long with setting up Consent Mode V2!
Don’t forget to grab our free step-by-step guide here.
Thanks for reading, and best of luck.
We’ll speak to each other soon!
Cheers,
Miles (& Bob)
