illow: Your Seamless Partner for Google Consent Mode v2 Integration

April 18, 2024

We’re incredibly excited to announce that illow has been officially recognized as a Google CMP Partner!

The digital advertising landscape is constantly evolving, and user privacy regulations are at the forefront. With the upcoming enforcement of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) in March 2024, Google Consent Mode v2 becomes essential for businesses targeting European audiences. illow, your trusted Consent Management Platform (CMP), empowers you to navigate these changes with ease.

Understanding Google Consent Mode v2

Introduced in 2020, Google Consent Mode acts as a bridge between user consent and Google services like Ads and Analytics. It allows websites to adjust Google tag behavior based on user choices. However, Google Consent Mode v2 brings crucial updates:

Granular Control: Two new consent parameters, ad_user_data and ad_personalization, provide finer control over user data usage. Users can now explicitly grant or deny consent for sharing data for advertising purposes and personalization.
Enhanced Compliance: V2 ensures compliance with the DMA by aligning with evolving privacy regulations.

A Quick Look Back at Google Consent Mode V1

When Google launched their Consent Mode V1 back in 2020, it first built a bridge between users and Google services such as Google Ads and Google Analytics, allowing websites to adapt Google tags’ behavior based on user consent. Afterwards, Google added the possibility to trigger any tag in Google Tag Manager using this same framework.

This means that whenever a website visitor grants consent by accepting conditions on the cookie banner, a consent signal is sent to Google Tag Manager allowing different services and tools to be triggered. In the same fashion, if the visitor rejects such notice, all services and tags remain blocked.

Key features in Google Consent Mode V1 included consent communication, tag behavior adaptation, region-specific configurations, URL parameter-based consent signaling and conversion modeling. However, it had its limitations, such as less granular control and more restrictions for cookie-less environments.

What’s New in Google Consent Mode V2?

Firstly, additional consent parameters were added to the framework, making it more granular on visitor’s choices and enabling websites to tailor the experience more appropriately:

Consent Type	Description
ad_user_data	It controls whether user data related to advertising can be sent to Google.
ad_personalization	It controls whether personalized advertising is allowed.

This marks a huge difference with V1. In the previous versions, consent parameters were all related to the permission to store personal data and cookies, whereas these new parameters talk about its use for ads and personalization. If the visitor rejects the latter two, the website will not be able to build specific audiences (ad_user_data) and display personalized ads (ad_personalization) within the EEA region.

Consent Parameters	Google Consent Mode V1	Google Consent Mode V2
ad_storage
analytics_storage
functionality_storage
personalization_storage
security_storage
ad_user_data
ad_personalization

Why is the Upgrade Important

Google is enforcing the use of Google Consent Mode V2 by February 2024 for all websites using Google Ads, Floodlight, Display, Google Analytics and other services. In other words, if your website does not use a CMP that implements it, you will not be able to do any audience building or remarketing and you might lose 60% (or even more) of your revenue in ads.

Failure to do so will result in:

Loss of User Acquisition: Inability to reach new users in the European Economic Area (EEA).
Limited Measurement: Inability to measure ad performance and user behavior effectively.
Hampered Remarketing: Restriction on running remarketing campaigns in Google Ads, Floodlight, and Display.

illow Simplifies Your Google Consent Mode v2 Journey

With illow, you can seamlessly integrate Google Consent Mode v2 and unlock its benefits:

Effortless Integration: Leverage our user-friendly interface and pre-built GTM Tag Template for a smooth setup.
Compliance Confidence: Ensure adherence to global privacy regulations with region-specific configurations.
Granular Control: Tailor data collection based on user consent for optimal user experience and data insights.
Seamless User Experience: Deliver a frictionless consent collection process for your users.