Why Consent Mode is necessary for your advertising accounts
Data protection might not be the trendiest topic in digital marketing, but it is essential. Companies must not only comply with legal requirements, but also gain and maintain the trust of their customers. Even the largest technology companies need to adapt.
Google and Microsoft have developed the so-called Consent Mode for this purpose.
Google Consent Mode (GCM) plays a crucial role in managing user data. But what exactly does this mean for your data, and why is it so important for the performance and KPIs of your advertising campaigns? And what is the equivalent for Microsoft Ads?
In this blog post, we will answer these questions and explain what impact the new Consent Modes will have on your advertising campaigns. We will take a look at the relevance of these changes for the Google and Microsoft Ads platforms.
What was Google Consent Mode again?
In principle, the GCM regulates the use of Google services such as Google Analytics 4 or Google Ads, adapted to the visitor’s consent.
The GCM is not a cookie banner in its own right, but merely reacts to the visitor’s consent decision in the cookie banner. The relevant Google services and products receive and respect this selection.
The first version of the GCM has been around for some time, but received little attention and was hardly implemented. Recently, however, due to changes in legislation, consent mode is now mandatory for websites with visitors from the EU.
You can find more information on the GCM in our article on the Digital Marketing Act in Europe.
GCM and advertising campaigns
The Digital Marketing Act obliges all marketing platforms, including Google, to only process user data with consent. As a result, a website that does not have GCM signals, will not process user data.
User data is the fuel for many features that we benefit from in digital marketing campaigns, and thus, not having Consent Mode may restrict some of these features.
- Conversion tracking
Conversions are crucial for measuring the success and return of investment of your advertising campaigns. Tracking conversions without Consent Mode is severely limited, and evaluating the performance of your ad campaigns is a challenge. This in turn leads to incorrect conclusions or resource allocation. - Enhanced conversions
Additional data sources, like email address, name, home address, or phone number, are not used to measure conversions more accurately (especially when cookies are restricted). This data is used to match your customers to Google accounts that were signed in to when they engaged with one of your ads. Eventually, this affects the recovery of conversions that otherwise wouldn’t have been measured and the quality of bidding optimization. - Remarketing
Remarketing campaigns rely on user data being collected and stored to retarget previous visitors. Without this data, you cannot create effective remarketing lists, and you cannot retarget potential customers who have already shown interest in your products or services with personalized advertising content. - Audiences
Data tracked with Google Analytics 4 (GA4) without GCM in place can affect the quality of audiences shared with Google Ads. This means that your ads may be less relevant to users, resulting in a lower click and conversion rate.
As the effectiveness of your campaigns is compromised, you may be forced to spend more budget to achieve the same results.
Therefore, it is important to integrate a correct configuration of Google Consent Mode to continue collecting and using accurate and relevant data for your advertising campaigns.
Advanced Mode – advertising campaigns firing on all cylinders
Google Consent Mode also offers an advanced mode. If this configuration is activated, Google services can also feed data from visitors who haven’t given their consent for personal data processing into the algorithm. The collected data is sent as “pings without cookies”.
The advantage of this configuration is enhanced data modeling through machine learning in Google Ads and Google Analytics 4. This in turn, allows precise advertising campaigns to be implemented for remarketing your web visitors – even without the user’s consent.
However, it is essential to first discuss with your data protection officer whether this option is compliant with your legal policy.
Microsoft Consent Mode – Mixed signals
Since July 2023, both Microsoft Ads and Microsoft Clarity have integrated a Consent Mode, following Google’s example. Digital marketing professionals who use Microsoft advertising solutions should also be aware of the consent mode and its uses.
However, Microsoft itself is not yet entirely clear on how it will enforce the issue within the EU.
The Microsoft Help page in English states that your website’s default setting for user consent will be “denied.” Websites within the EU, Switzerland, and the UK are gradually enforcing this default setting.
On the same page in German, however, there is information that the default setting “granted” applies to all pages. (Status on date of publication: 14.08.24)
To be on the safe side, we therefore recommend that you also take Microsoft Consent Mode into account. If Microsoft applies the default “denied” setting, data from website visitors will reduce the accuracy of measuring, optimizing, and targeting your Microsoft advertising campaigns if Consent Mode is not used.
Get in touch with our Analytics team for more information and advice on how best to configure your Consent Mode for Microsoft and Google Ads.
