This article explores Google Consent Mode - looking at how to get started, the products that Consent Mode, and how to benefit as a business.
Google wants businesses to up their game by installing Consent Mode on their website – which has left many asking why? But we shouldn’t be asking why, we should be asking why not.
Google’s Consent Mode lets users opt-in or out of sharing their information on a website, while enabling businesses to adjust tag behavior accordingly. With Consent Mode, users have control over their data and marketers can collect conversion signals without compromising privacy. It works without including any personal identifiers, making it a privacy-respectful way to collect critical data.
The benefit for businesses is that Consent Mode allows you to easily control tag behavior in GTM based on the level of user consent, while offering conversion modeling in GA4. In fact, when combined with GA4 and Enhanced Conversions, it becomes a crucial part of any business’s Durable Measurement strategy.
But it’s not just that. Consent Mode’s utility extends far beyond tag behavior control. It also proves invaluable in addressing the gaps that arise when users refuse to share their data, thanks to its exceptional Conversion modeling capabilities. When users are opting out of sharing information, you can start experiencing a large gap in your measurement and lose visibility of the users’ journeys across your website. This hinders you from directly linking users’ ad interactions to conversions. It also makes it difficult to determine whether users are returning visitors or have stumbled upon the website through organic or paid traffic sources.
Conversion modeling is a solution bundled within Consent Mode, it runs on machine learning to analyze historical trends and observable data to quantify the relationship between unconsented and consented users. By linking this information, it provides you with more valuable insights that would otherwise be lost, resulting in optimal results. Conversions that are modeled via conversion modeling are directly integrated within Google Ads campaign reports with the same granularity as observed conversions.
With the help of Conversion Modeling, you can continue to understand the relation between ad interactions and conversions. You will be better placed to understand how users are converting on your site, and also optimize and manage your campaign spends and bidding strategies accordingly.
Which products support Consent Mode?
The products that Consent Mode currently supports are – Google Ads, Floodlights and Google Analytics. Once a user has provided their consent, the relevant measurement functions will be treated according to their default behaviors. When consent for analytics storage or ad storage is denied, the relevant measurement features have their behavior adjusted accordingly.
What happens when a user restricts data collection only for a certain functionality?
Consent mode works dynamically enabling you to entirely deploy a flexible solution due to varying user choices. Suppose if a user is happy to give consent to the analytics cookies but not ads, then Consent Mode alters the behavior of the tags so they continue collecting analytics data but fully disable ads data – this also is fully functional the other way around. This helps in respecting users’ choices and not losing any valuable data as a whole where applicable.
Get started with Consent Mode
A primary requirement to implement Consent Mode is the addition of a few lines of code above your global site tag or tag manager container. One such way to do this is to manually implement it. Alternatively, if you require additional assistance, Google has strong working relationships with a number of Consent Management Platforms, some of which already can handle some crucial implementation steps on behalf of you.
Take the first step towards unlocking the full potential of Consent Mode and Conversion Modeling for your business.
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For more information, get in touch with our team of seasoned experts at Incubeta.