Google Consent Mode v2: what it is and how to set it up

Google Consent Mode is a way for your site to tell Google tags whether the visitor has consented, using a small set of signals. Version 2 added two advertising-specific signals on top of the original ones, and Google now requires these for advertisers who want to use audiences and full conversion measurement for users in the European Economic Area.

Instead of simply blocking Google tags entirely when there is no consent, Consent Mode lets those tags load but operate in a restricted way, sending cookieless pings for modeling rather than setting identifiers. When consent is granted, the tags switch to full behavior.

Consent Mode v2 works with four parameters. analytics_storage controls whether analytics cookies and identifiers can be used. ad_storage controls advertising cookies. ad_user_data, new in v2, controls whether user data can be sent to Google for advertising. ad_personalization, also new in v2, controls whether data can be used for personalized advertising such as remarketing.

Each signal is either granted or denied. Your job is to set them to denied by default for regions that require prior consent, then flip the relevant ones to granted when the visitor accepts the matching category in your banner.

The correct pattern is to set a default consent state before any Google tag fires, with the advertising and analytics signals denied for prior-consent regions. This default must run first, which is why the consent platform loads high in the head. Then, when the visitor makes a choice, you push an update that grants the signals that match the categories they accepted.

If you skip the default and only update after consent, Google tags may fire with full behavior on the very first page view before the visitor has chosen, which defeats the purpose.

The simplest setup is to let your consent management platform handle the signals for you. With ConsentX, you enable Google Consent Mode v2 and map your banner categories to the four signals. The platform then emits the default denied state on load and the update when the visitor chooses, so you do not hand-write the dataLayer pushes.

If you use Google Tag Manager, make sure the consent platform initializes on the Consent Initialization trigger so the defaults are in place before any tag evaluates. With a direct gtag setup, the default command must appear before your config commands.

Use Google's Tag Assistant or the consent state shown in your browser's developer tools to confirm the default denied state is present on first load. Before you click the banner, the advertising and analytics signals should read denied. After you accept, they should switch to granted for the categories you allowed.

Also confirm that with consent denied, Google tags send the modeled cookieless pings rather than setting advertising cookies. If you see ad cookies before consent, the default is not being applied early enough.