What is Consent Mode V2?
A development of Cookie Consent mode, privacy law and how personal information is collected by websites and advertisers in particular. Specifically it’s the technical way for how websites flag and send visitor information to Google regarding user choices on handling their personal information via the cookie banner/ policy. Consent mode has been around for a while now, but unlike Cookie banners and “V1” consent, V2 is a very serious issue with massive consequences if it is not implemented at a basic level.
Google is now ultimately forcing ecommerce stores and websites which collect personally identifiable data to use Consent Mode V2 and rolling this out now.
What’s the basic impact of not implementing Consent Mode V2?
- Remarketing campaigns will start using such limited data they will suffer badly and possibly not work at all.
- Audience signals and data will fail causing significant performance issues if the campaigns rely on audience signals.
- Performance Max campaigns in particular are especially affected as they rely on high quality data for AI bidding and campaign optimisation.
- The GA4 and Google Ads link is likely to fail by the end of March 2024 (TBC).
- Currently it is unknown as to whether and how much this will affect conversion tracking itself, but it is likely to to some degree.
Without Consent Mode v2, from a technical digital marketing perspective, this happens:
- Personal data collection for online advertising is disabled.
- No user_id identifiers are possible
- No enhanced conversions are passed to Google Ads
- Google Ads and Google Marketing 360 products receive no data.
- Personalised advertising using GA4 audiences and audience signals will not function
Caveat: The issue OneFeed have with providing advice is every website and tracking setup is different. Some cookie banners for example are created via a Plugin to the website, while others are custom coded by a developer and some do not actually function to block cookies at all.
A cookie banner must be used for consent mode V2 to be used, as they work together – the cookie banner settings send the relevant consent signals and settings to Google (GA4 and Google Ads).
Our clients must be aware of and have a plan in place to get this implemented as soon as possible, as this has started affecting Google Ads and GA4 data collection now.
2 types of Consent mode:
1. “Basic” tells Google whether a user has consented to sharing their info. If not, then no data is collected at all. It’ll simply be missing. This is how the original consent mode functioned, by “allowing or disallowing” cookies.
With basic consent, modeling is truly this straightforward: You get an estimate for the no-to-cookies visitors based on those visitors that said yes-to-cookies. But with the advanced mode, on the other hand, you feed Google’s machine learning algorithm with more data—to make the modeling more accurate.
2. “Advanced” mode gives Google a degree of data that it takes and uses AI to guestimate and fill in the gaps of data (they say 65% data recovery, but we’ll see!) With this there are 4 variables that are set rather than the basic 2 in the above solution, which is essentially what V1 should have been accomplishing with basic cookie consent banner for years.
The additional data you receive with advanced mode feeds Google’s machine learning algorithm with more data—to make the modeling more accurate. This includes:
- Device Type
- Conversion Type
- Country
- Time of Day
- Browser Type
- Website visitors come to your website.
- Visitors say either no to tracking, and others say yes.
- Only data from those visitors who say yes to tracking will be processed in GA4 and Google Ads.
- Missing data is filled in through generalising from those who did accept cookies, which is likely to be less accurate
- Website visitors arrive on your website.
- Cookie banner fires
- Some visitors say no to tracking, and others accept yes.
- Data from visitors who say yes to tracking are processed in GA4 and Google Ads.
- Data from visitors that say no to tracking will be transferred to GA4 and Google Ads via “cookieless pings.”
- Missing data is the modeled using AI to fill in the gaps in data
How to fix and implement Consent Mode 2?
Arguably the quickest and easiest ways to resolve this is by using a “Consent Management Platform” (CMP), a list of which are here: https://www.g2.com/categories/consent-management-platform-cmp/free but these are often chargeable and need to be assessed by the business for their suitability, as different sized websites and functionality attract different costs.
The second method is changing the website’s code either through Tag Manager or custom coding it, which is more involved. As this can often take a long time to build it’s important to get a plan in place now with a delivery date for mid-march latest to give some leeway as to when the actual change will happen.
What you need to check and understand for your own website’s compliance:
- Is there a currently compliant solution in use from Google’s list: https://cmppartnerprogram.withgoogle.com/#partnersWhat
- Are you aware of this change and it being worked on by yourself or a developer currently?
If either of the above is a ‘yes’, then we need to ensure we capture the data for when this was implemented. If not then further questions should be asked to assess what kind of solution should be investigated.
-
- What tracking solution you use? E.g. Tag Manager, Gtag, Application/Plugin specific to the website
- Does the website have a cookie banner, which functions correctly? (e.g. actually blocks cookies when a visitor doesn’t click the consent button)
- Does the documentation of the current cookie solution provide information on V2 or expect this to be added to it’s functionality in time?
- Is there developer support available to resolve this and provide a fix in time?
- Would you prefer a configurable, but possibly pay monthly solution, over a custom solution built or extended by a developer without an ongoing cost to a third party service
If the answer to the above is still ‘No’ then investigation is needed for the solution you would prefer to use ahead of time. Feel free to discuss this with your OneFeed account manager but note the avenues we go through are the same as above to establish exact requirements. Although OneFeed is not responsible for tracking solutions, GDPR, cookie management etc, we will of course provide as much advice as much as possible to support our client’s navigate technical marketing issues as much as we can.
Third Party Cookies in Google Chrome
Furthermore by “Q3 2024” (which is still uncertain and subject to change and recently delayed from the “final” March ’24 deadline) Google Chrome will block all third party cookies. Given this affects ~60-65% of all Internet visitors will lead to a complete inability to collect tracking and user information in Analytics using third party cookies. The current (subject to change) timeline is below.
Current timeframe from GoogleConsent Mode Resources and Additional Reading:
Here is a presentation we’ve edited to focus on the most important aspects from Google: https://drive.google.com/file/d/17gpLaJiNjyUSphFheGhkv5WJFlgzcmyG/view?usp=sharing
This change to consent handling is discussed in more technical detail on the Google Developer blog: https://developers.google.com/privacy-sandbox/3pcd
Links to more information on phasing out cookies from Google:
Phasing out: https://developers.google.com/privacy-sandbox/3pcd/prepare/prepare-for-phaseout
Cookie audit: https://developers.google.com/privacy-sandbox/3pcd/prepare/audit-cookies
Website cookieless testing: https://developers.google.com/privacy-sandbox/3pcd/prepare/test-for-breakage
Googles Dev Docs:
https://developers.google.com/tag-platform/security/guides/consent
Tag Manager Setup:
https://www.tagmate.app/blogs/how-to-implement-consent-mode-in-ga4-gtm-method-for-2023
