To stay compliant with privacy regulations and standards, many marketers turn to consent management platforms (CMPs). If you're not familiar with CMPs or Google’s Consent Mode, or simply want to learn more about how they can help you adhere to today’s (and tomorrow's) privacy restraints, read on.
Essentially CMPs help you collect user consent, ensure your site is adhering to appropriate cookie policies and make it easier to change tag behavior based on the preference given. Generally speaking, most CMPs will offer:
Google’s Consent Mode works with your Consent Management Platforms to preserve data collection for Google platforms while respecting consent. It is an effective compromise with growing privacy regulation, marrying user consent preferences set in the CMP with the opportunity to still collect user behavior information anonymously in Google platforms. Consent Mode provides a solution to several pain points that have become apparent as the use of Consent Management Platforms becomes more common.
The goal of Google's Consent Mode is to respect user consent and mitigate data collection risk, while also enabling websites to have accurate data sets with which they can still understand aggregate user behavioral and conversion metrics. Using traditional trigger blocking methods, we've seen significant data loss for sites that have adopted a consent management framework.
Google aims to address the issue of data loss by providing a mechanism for changing tag behavior based on consent, rather than blocking it altogether if consent is denied. When consent isn't given, Google still sends a cookieless ping to their servers that allow them to use this data for modeling purposes (in GA4 only), so companies can still have an accurate picture of content performance, site behavior and conversion rates, despite the loss of user identifiers. This functionality is currently only built for Google tags.
Behavioral Modeling in GA4 will compensate for the absence of collected data through the use of models trained on the data provided by the cookieless pings. This modeling is also currently available in Google Ads.
Consent settings enable you to manage Google tag behavior more easily in Google Tag Manager (GTM). Instead of having to manage the tag's behavior on every trigger, you can now set the consent behavior that needs to occur on the tags themselves. Several Consent Management Platforms already have an integration with Consent Mode, so the consent preferences captured via the site banner can be communicated directly with Google.
Questions? Reach out and we’d be happy to share more about CMPs, Google’s Consent Mode and other ways to maintain user privacy.
Please note that all of the above is meant to be informational only and is not intended to constitute legal advice. Please consult with your legal counsel before implementing consent management platforms and Google's Consent Mode.