Consent Mode v2

What Consent Mode v2 does

Consent Mode is a Google feature that connects your cookie banner to Google's tags: GA4, Google Ads and Floodlight. When a visitor makes a choice on the banner, the banner sends consent signals to Google's tags, and the tags adjust. If the visitor agrees, tracking works normally. If they decline, tags either stay silent or send limited, cookieless pings, depending on how it's configured.

Version 2 added two signals to the original two. The full set is:

• analytics_storage: whether analytics cookies may be used;
• ad_storage: whether advertising cookies may be used;
• ad_user_data: whether user data may be sent to Google for advertising;
• ad_personalization: whether data may be used for personalized ads such as remarketing.

Without the two newer signals, Google may treat consent as incomplete, which can limit remarketing audiences and conversion measurement.

Why it matters for Canadian businesses

Canada doesn't have a single cookie law, but privacy rules still apply to tracking. PIPEDA requires meaningful consent for collecting and using personal information, and the form of consent depends on how sensitive the data is and what people would reasonably expect. Alberta and British Columbia have their own private-sector acts.

Quebec's Law 25 is stricter. Technologies that identify, locate or profile people must be turned off by default, and visitors must be told about them and given a way to activate them. For a business with customers in Quebec, a banner that loads tags before any choice is a real compliance problem. Consent Mode, set up with conservative defaults, is the practical way to meet that expectation while keeping measurement working. For a longer explanation, see cookie consent in Canada.

Basic or advanced

There are two ways to implement it.

Basic Consent Mode blocks Google tags entirely until the visitor consents. Nothing is sent before that. It's the simplest to explain and the most conservative. Google then models conversions from general patterns, with less precision.

Advanced Consent Mode loads Google tags immediately with consent denied by default. Until the visitor agrees, tags send only cookieless pings without identifiers. Google uses these to model the behaviour of people who declined, which gives more complete reports and better ad optimization.

Which one fits depends on your audience, your risk tolerance and your legal advice. For a business focused on Quebec, I usually lean conservative; elsewhere, advanced mode is common. I explain the trade-off and set up what you choose.

The parts beyond Google

Consent Mode only governs Google's tags. The Meta Pixel, TikTok, LinkedIn, chat widgets and heatmap tools need separate rules. In Google Tag Manager I set each of them to fire only after the relevant consent is given. I also check for tags hard-coded in the website that bypass Tag Manager altogether, a common reason banners don't actually block anything.

Testing

I test three scenarios: everything accepted, everything rejected, and partial choices like analytics yes and advertising no. For each, I check which tags fire and which consent signals Google receives, using Tag Manager's preview and Google's diagnostic tools. A banner that looks right but doesn't change tag behaviour is surprisingly common; an analytics audit usually catches it.

Banner wording matters too

Consent rates depend heavily on how the banner is written. Plain language that explains what you track and why, with equal visibility for accept and reject, tends to earn more trust than vague text or hidden reject buttons. Manipulative designs also run against the spirit of Law 25. Your privacy and cookie policy should describe the same tools the banner mentions.