Last Updated on June 12, 2025 by admin
In a report from May 2023, Google states that “with Consent Mode in place, Air France’s visible conversions rose by 9% across Europe” after experiencing a 20% drop in conversions due to recent cookie guidance compliance.In a report from May 2023, Google states that “with Consent Mode in place, Air France’s visible conversions rose by 9% across Europe” after experiencing a 20% drop in conversions due to recent cookie guidance compliance. How can a company benefit from more accurate measurement as privacy regulations become increasingly strict? Consent Mode is the solution proposed by Google to continue providing valuable insights in a privacy-first digital world. This guide has everything you need to know about Consent Mode, including what it is, why it should matter to website owners or advertisers, and how to activate it in no time. Let’s dive in. Table of Contents What is Google Consent Mode? What are the benefits of Google Consent Mode? How To Activate Google Consent Mode New Implications for 2024: Google Consent Mode Version Two For visitors who do not grant their consent, companies are still able to get some crucial trends using existing data from consenting users. More on “how” later. In a nutshell, we can say that Consent Mode helps advertisers, publishers, or website owners comply with the consent requirements set by data protection laws (like the GDPR) while still leveraging Google services (such as Analytics and Ads). Who is Google Consent Mode for? Consent Mode is a solution developed by Google for customers who use audience features for the following products: Google Analytics Google Ads Floodlight Conversion Linker If you’re an advertiser, publisher, developer, or website owner with a presence in Europe, consent is usually required to carry out marketing activities. These include serving personalized ads or collecting analytics via trackers. If that’s your case, I’d recommend looking into Consent Mode. How does Google Consent Mode work? Consent Mode strikes the perfect balance between respecting user privacy and collecting valuable data insights. To respect user consent, it adjusts how Google tags behave based on the consent status for advertising or analytics trackers given on the website’s banner. When consent is denied, tags aren’t loaded and trackers aren’t used. No data is collected on the user. To add value for Google users, it uses a technology called conversion modeling to recover lost conversion data for users who didn’t consent and to get an improved view of performance. More on Conversion Modeling Without getting too much into the technical details, conversion modeling uses AI, probability, and machine learning to analyze observable data and trends from users who gave their consent. It then models paths and quantifies the relationship between consented and unconsented users to report conversion data for all visitors. The key takeaway here is that conversion modeling measures a significantly more accurate conversion rate without using any identifying information — so it doesn’t violate privacy. What are the benefits of Google Consent Mode? Let’s start with a practical example. Example: Volkswagen Belgium This 2024 case study of Volkswagen Belgium is probably the best way to demonstrate the significant impact Google Consent Mode can have on your business. As a car company, Volkswagen gathers data on potential car buyers through cookies to understand how they interact with their website. This is crucial for them as “the more insights [they] have […], the more effective and efficient [their] campaigns can be.” What they realized is that in the past years, users became more privacy-conscious. This led many to opt out of analytical cookies. “For some brands, the consent acceptance rates dropped 20% in just two years,” cites the article. What did this mean? A loss of valuable data and a distorted view of reality since user activity could not be tracked. They implemented Consent Mode and have been able to recover nearly all 20% of data lost from the drop in cookie acceptance. In turn, this gave them a more accurate view of performance and helped with optimization, allocation, and ROI calculation of media campaigns. Why Google Consent Mode Is Worth Using Here are the reasons why I believe Consent Mode can become a game-changer for you: With a legally-required consent banner in place on your site, users can deny consent to tracking. For you, this means losing the opportunity to collect precious data on these users since you can’t track them. This results in gaps in measurement and fewer insights from existing campaigns. With Consent Mode activated, you respect user consent AND continue reporting conversions. That means you’re learning more about your ad spend, and you can effectively attribute conversions to the right campaigns. You can also leverage bids better, reallocate budget to your best-performing campaigns, or target specific audiences. The bottom line: Google Consent Mode can allow you to better optimize your marketing efforts and boost your revenue. How To Activate Google Consent Mode There are various ways to implement Consent Mode, some more technical than others. That’s why I’ve decided to focus on the one method that was recommended by Google in their main user guide. Best Practice: Use a Consent Management Platform. A Consent Management Platform (CMP) is a software solution designed to collect, store and manage user consent for specific data collection activities (i.e., analytics, advertising, retargeting) via a consent banner on a website or app. To simplify the Consent Mode activation process, Google has specifically selected a list of CMP Partners that can support this. These Google-certified CMPs can help you install a banner on your website with Consent Mode built in. Some leading tools include iubenda, Didomi, consentmanager, or Osano. These solutions are the key to a quick, simple, and reliable activation. They allow for a full banner customization that complies with major consent regulations like the GDPR and Cookie Law, as well as Google’s EUUCP policy. When using a CMP, Consent Mode is usually enabled by default. It can also be configured via Google Tag Manager. New Implications for 2024: Google Consent Mode Version Two Initially introduced