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Consent Mode

You can now enable Google Consent Mode for Tag Manager. How it works, and what you need to configure can be found here.

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You can also directly download the demo container with triggers and variables/ Please make sure you know how to import a container.

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Google Consent Mode

From 5.5 onward, our premium plugin offers support for Consent Mode (beta) for the following Google Products:
  • Google Ads
  • Floodlight
  • Google Analytics
  • Google Tag Manager*
    *Google Tag Manager uses the built-in API and is available for all tags but is implicit to the same Google products as shown above.

What does Google Consent Mode do?

Consent Mode is an API by Google to update consent states when communicating with your chosen CMP, in this case, Complianz. The difference between our standard set-up and Consent Mode is that Google is no longer blocked before consent but will be notified on consent state updates by Complianz, and Google will take the appropriate actions.

Google Analytics Example

We will use Google Analytics is an example, as it is most common for all users. Behavior should be the same for the API. Data logging would be based on a per-service basis.

Default Consent IP addresses Default Data Collection Data Collection on Consent Cookies
Standard Anonymized Allowed Anonymized Anonymous Data (1) Anonymous Data (1) Always
Standard Not Anonymized Denied Optional None Not Limited When Granted
Google Consent Mode Denied Optional Cookieless pings will be sent to Google Analytics for basic measurement and modeling purposes(2) Not Limited When Granted

(1) Data is directly available in your Analytics dashboard

(2) Data logging and visualization for end-user is unknown. To make sure it works correctly. See below explanation. Source: Google

How to check if Consent Mode is working?

Because we need to unblock all Google scripts so Consent Mode can work properly, extensions for your browser will not be able to read the API logging properly. There are two things you can do to check if the API at least gets the correct information based on your consent status: Does your consent status equal the API logging? If so, are cookies set on granted and not on denied?

Logging the API Consent State of Consent Mode

In your browser console you can add the following script to see the current status of the API:

Now check if cookies are set based on the API expectations:

In your browser console you can add the following script to see the current status of the API: When the default state is:

				
					/* No Cookies */
analytics_storage:
Default: denied		
Update: denied
				
			
You should not expect any analytics cookies. If this is the case, please check if you have any other implementations of Google Analytics on your website, or the cookies are indeed from Analytics and not another Google product as they are set granularly.
				
					/* Cookies */
analytics_storage:
Default: denied		
Update: granted
				
			
Tag Manager users can also consult their datalayer with the following function:

Enabling Consent Mode in Complianz

You can enable consent mode in the wizard under Statistics – Configuration. Make sure you have either a Tag Manager Container Code (GTM-****) or a Google Analytics 4 code (G-****). We currently do not offer support for Universal Analytics and Consent Mode.

If you have enabled Consent Mode for Google Analytics, make sure you don’t implement Analytics elsewhere. That’s all.

Configuring Tag Manager

If you use Tag Manager, you will need to configure your Tags for Consent Mode and remove current custom events, if you prior configured Tag Manager for Complianz.

Changing your current configuration

If you have already configured Complianz for Tag Manager and you want to switch to Consent Mode you can do the following:

  • Remove all custom events and exceptions that deal with Complianz events or cookie changes.
  • Default to triggering with “All Pages” or choose any trigger you want. The consent is implemented in the Tag itself.
  • You can use a ‘hybrid’ solution as well, because Complianz events will still fire.

Enabling Consent Mode

After enabling Consent Mode in Complianz, the aforementioned Google Products with built-in support for Consent Mode can now be fired on “All Pages”. The built-in consent checks within these tags will determine which functionality is allowed to be loaded.

Although some Google services are implicit, it is still possible to be explicit about the conditions.

Analytics Example

As explained earlier, some Google Products have native solutions for Consent Mode. In those cases, Google has already defined which functionalities can be loaded based on consent.

Alternatively, you can configure an explicit action to define which type of consent is required before the tag is allowed to fire. You can choose between different categories.

  1. Go to your specific Tag. In this example Google Analytics
  2. Go to “Advanced Settings”
  3. Go to “Consent Settings (BETA)”
  4. Choose one of the categories below. In this example, we use “analytics_storage”
  5. Done (Don’t forget to submit)
Complianz category Use cases
security_storage Functional Payment fraud detection and login security
functional_storage Functional Preparation of new or dynamic content
personalization_storage Preferences Personalized content without user-interaction
analytics_storage Analytics* Any form of statistics not anonymized and stored locally
ad_storage Marketing Any script or cookie tracking user behavior

Third-party tags with Consent Mode

Third-party tags will require built-in support for Consent Mode in order for these tags to work out-of-the-box. You can define additional consent tags as explained above, to specify which type of consent should at least be obtained before the tag is allowed fire.

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