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How Google Consent Mode Helps Balance Customer Privacy and Customer Experience


— January 13, 2021

Consumer privacy has been a long-discussed issue that had yet to find an answer. With the Consent mode analytics measurement has become flexible enough to accommodate consumer consent.


Google Consent is becoming an increasingly important part of the tech world. We are required to find a fresh balance between online privacy and digital advertising. Its mission is to make digital presence sustainable.

Before the advent of Google Consent mode, analytics data used to get corrupted. This happened because consent needed to be given for allowing measuring of particular statistics. Google Consent allows you to receive the proper analytics and measuring of conversions. While it stays compliant to the regulations of data privacy, such as LGPD, ePrivacy and GDPR. It also works when using Google Ads, Tag Manager and Analytics.

With the Google Consent website can run the above-mentioned Google services on the consent of their visitors. It streamlines your analytics and consent management to form an efficient solution.

The Mode was launched by Google on 3rd September 2020. Google Consent enables marketing departments to work with accurate analytics data and conversions. It helps keep a compliant consent system of management in place. It is mainly the first stage towards solving the problems between marketing versus privacy. Before this, the enormous collection of personal information and its use. All kinds of targeted advertising which triggered the need for increased further regulation.

In almost all around the world these regulations for data privacy have emerged and evolved. They make it difficult for the sales and marketing departments to take decisions without collection of proper data. Data privacy has become significantly important since 2016. Every regulation for privacy around the world uses Consent for personal data. Almost all website owners and data controller require the consent of a user in order to process the information.

A woman with dark hair gazes to our right, against a background of digital ones and zeroes.
Public domain image courtesy of Max Pixel. http://maxpixel.freegreatpicture.com/Code-View-Face-Binary-Privacy-Policy-Woman-1327493 CC0

With Google Consent mode a sustainable and improved digital economy can be built. It moves away from the mere collection of personal information towards a dynamic framework. It is based on user consent and does not damage large section of the digital economy.

How Does it Work?

To understand how Google Consent mode helps customer privacy it is important to understand its workings. The mode is an API which takes the consent status of the customers into consideration. While it handles the attitude of Google’s tags and scripts used by a platform or website. 

The Consent mode has introduced two new tags settings. Analytics_storage handles cookie management analytics. Ad_storage on the other hand deals with cookie management for advertisement. 

  1. Analytics_Storage

Google Consent regulates behavior of analytics cookies in link with user content with this setting. It makes Google analytics adjusts data collection based on each visitor’s consent. When users do not provide consent for settings of statistics cookies, your site will still receive basic and non-identifying measurements. Those include:

  • Timestamps of visitors on the website.
  • User agent which sees if users landed on the site
  • Referrer which sees how the user landed on the site
  • See if prior or current page of user navigation has ad-click data included in the URL
  • A number for each page load
  1. Ad_Storage

Google Consent mode regulates how marketing cookies work in relation to your website’s user consent. The tag settings for this are called ad_storage. Without a visitor’s consent to advertise or market cookies, Google Consent adjust handling of marketing related tags. With this in place, a website will still display contextual advertising based upon anonymous data.

Basically, Google Consent is allowing a website to record and measure conversions on an aggregate standard, instead of single users. Websites can keep being GDPR compliant while obtaining insights of your online marketing performance. The mode also offers to adapt the workings of Google tags based upon the region from where a user belongs. 

With the integration of Google Consent comes the era of true consent and privacy. This might be entirely taking over targeted advertising in the near future. A sustainability is gained digital economy while remaining at its center. An excess of data collection has been into play on a worldwide scale for a good number of years. It’s only in the last few years that users have become more aware about it. Abuse of private data and online breaches of personal information were being practiced all the time. 

International regulations for privacy and cookie laws have resulted around the globe to combat this. Uncontrolled harvesting of personal data had to come to a halt. Now Google Consent is an important part of data security law of the European Union. What was needed for the digital economy was a way to make digital advertising and data privacy coexist. 

This had not been accomplished until now. Especially not by browsers that were privacy focused or ad blockers. It is most likely to be witnessed soon that digital advertising will switch from targeted to contextual marketing. It will also not be based upon the personal data of users anymore.

Google Brings a Balance to the Mix

Since the September launch of Google Consent mode, there is no need to choose between privacy and optimize opt-in rates. This allows for improved analytics and measurement. The legal digital landscape is altering. Google created the solution which meets the public protest for more user privacy. This changing scenario will ensure a secure user experience while websites being able to market successfully. 

Consumer privacy has been a long-discussed issue that had yet to find an answer. With the Consent mode analytics measurement has become flexible enough to accommodate consumer consent. Through this mode the tech industry also moves away from the use of cookies. Their purpose has transformed since the early days of the internet. It now also includes analytics and ad data alongside browser preference. 

Google Consent mode allows the continuation of this trend but offers alternatives. It is possible for a website visitor to control them. This results in a fresh analytic flexibility for site hosts along with maintaining privacy. For further information on the changing scenario of digital economy reach out to cheap essay writing service. We offer quality content on this topic and various other subjects according to your requirements. 

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