Are you also worried that a cookie banner will prevent you from getting data?
That you won’t be able to see how many people visit your website or which Ads campaign they came from? Because some users say no to cookies!
Fear not.
Google recently introduced Consent Mode to ensure you reliable data from all those visitors who decline cookies in your cookie banner.
So, with Consent Mode you can have both marketing data and respect your visitors’ cookie consent choices.
Here’s how.
Google Analytics in the age of the GDPR
Imagine that you’ve written a killer blog post about a topic that really interest your readers. You expect this to even help push some readers to buy the thing you sell.
You hit publish and you also post it on your social media channels.
After a couple of days, you get curious and want to see how your post is performing.
You turn to Google Analytics and… you see visits and some sessions, but not in the range you expected.
Was the post not good enough? Was the timing bad? Or was it something else?
One word keeps popping up. GDPR.
Yes. The GDPR.
Privacy laws like the GDPR require you – as a website owner – to ask your visitors for permission to use cookies.
Why?
Because cookies often collect a lot of personal information.
Information so you can see where in the world your readers come from. If they read on mobile or website. Android or iOS.
If your visitors refuse cookies, then you miss out on a lot of useful information.
So, to respect your users’ cookie consent choices and still get some information about traffic and ad clicks, Google has introduced Consent Mode.
Now you are probably wondering how Consent Mode can help you?
I will tell you that! In an easy-to-read format. Here’s all you need to know about cookies and Google Consent Mode.
What is Google Consent Mode?
Google recently released a new feature that allows you to get data from those users who say no to your cookies.
This new feature is called Consent Mode and is part of Google’s services that work with Google Analytics and Google Ads.
Consent Mode gives you access to visitor metrics that would otherwise have been lost because you couldn’t collect data with cookies.
Turning back to the example with your killer blog post and the difficulties in measuring its success:
Although readers may flock to your website and read the post, the reason you get unreliable data for Google Analytics may be that some of those readers say no to cookies.
So, you don’t know how many actually read the post or if the post catapulted readers into browsing other pages on your site, maybe even buying something.
Thus, it makes it harder for you to optimize your ad texts and content production.
Consent Mode makes it possible for you to get aggregated data from those users who decline your cookies to give you a more complete picture of your online success.
Here’s how it works
How does Consent Mode allow you to get data on visitors that don't accept cookies?
So, here’s where it gets a bit technical, but don’t worry. Once installed, it actually works quite smoothly.
Google Consent Mode makes use of five new tags called:
- ad_storage
- analytics_storage
- functionality_storage
- personalization_storage
- security_storage
These tag control the behaviour of Google Tags and cookies used by Google.
Consent Mode detects whether your visitor accepts or rejects cookies on your website. Based on that decision, it takes one of two paths.
Either cookies are set like normal. Or else Google uses anonymized pings for analytics.
Here’ an example:
So, imagine you have written a good ad text for Google Ads. A potential customer clicks the ad, lands on your website and gives consent to cookies. Cookies are placed and all tracking continue as normal (because your visitor gave permission).
No problem.
Now, suppose your visitor does not give consent. You respect that decision; your website does not use any cookies and you cannot track neither the visit nor the conversion.
And that’s bad for your business.
But what Consent Mode does is to use anonymized pings instead of tracking cookies to deliver you aggregated data to measure conversions in Analytics and Ads.
So, Consent Mode ensures you get some data about the visit and the conversion. And it’s completely anonymized.
And a little data is better than no data, especially when there are very strict rules for using cookies (read here the GDPR).
Does Google Consent mode ensure my GDPR compliance?
Is Google Consent Mode GDPR compliant?
No.
Consent Mode only detects whether your user gives consent or not. And then changes behavior depending on this choice.
Google leaves the compliance part with its CMP partners (Consent Management Partners).
Yes, because Consent Mode only works with a CMP.
Here’s how to get Consent Mode and a GDPR compliant cookie consent banner 👇
How do I get Google Consent Mode?
So, you are probably wondering how you can get Consent Mode for your website.
First of all, Google Consent Mode is unfortunately not a simple website plugin you can find in your CMS. That would be great though.
Consent Mode is actually an add-on to your cookie banner.
But not just any cookie banner.
Consent Mode actually only works with a handful of Consent Management Platforms that provides cookie pop-ups. Those approved by Google.
- ad_storage → marketing category
- analytics _storage → statistical category
- functionality_storage → functional category
- personalization_storage → marketing category
- security_storage → necessary category