Consent Mode v2: basic or advanced, and what do you actually need?

Consent Mode v2 tells Google what a visitor to your website has agreed to: if they consent, Google Analytics and Google Ads work fully; if they decline, Google's tags respect that choice. Version 2 added two new signals, and for users in the European Economic Area, measurement, personalisation and remarketing in Google Ads now depend on them. There are two ways to set it up: with basic, nothing is sent to Google before consent; with advanced, cookieless signals are sent even without consent, and missing data is modelled more precisely.

This article gives a general overview and is not legal advice. For your own website, speak to a data protection adviser.

What is Consent Mode v2?

Consent Mode makes the Google tags on your website, meaning Google Analytics, Google Ads and anything loaded through Tag Manager, behave according to the visitor's consent. In Google's words, it lets you communicate your users' cookie or app identifier consent status to Google, and tags adjust their behaviour to respect users' choices.

Consent Mode works with four signals. The last two are new in version 2:

Signal	What it controls
analytics_storage	Cookies for analytics (Google Analytics)
ad_storage	Cookies for advertising (Google Ads)
ad_user_data (new in v2)	Sending user data to Google for advertising
ad_personalization (new in v2)	Personalised advertising, meaning remarketing

Each signal is either "granted" or "denied". Your cookie banner records the visitor's choice; Consent Mode translates it into the four signals and passes them to Google's tags.

Why do you need Consent Mode v2?

You need Consent Mode v2 because Google has tied its advertising features for users in the European Economic Area (EEA) to consent signals. According to Google Ads Help, advertisers who receive data from users in the EEA must collect consent and share it with Google to keep using measurement, ad personalisation and remarketing features.

Behind this sits Google's EU user consent policy, which asks for three things:

• valid consent for cookies where legally required, and for the use of personal data to personalise ads,
• records of the consents given, and clear instructions on how users can withdraw them,
• clear naming of every party that may collect or receive data through Google products.

In practice, without Consent Mode, Google Ads can't make full use of conversions, audiences and remarketing for visitors from the EEA. If you are based outside the EU but advertise to customers inside it, from the UK, for example, this applies to you directly. The UK has its own cookie rules, which are currently changing for some analytics cookies; check the latest guidance from the Information Commissioner's Office.

What is the difference between basic and advanced?

The difference is what goes to Google before the visitor consents. Google's developer documentation spells it out:

	Basic	Advanced
Tags before consent	Don't load	Load, with the default set to "denied"
Sent to Google before consent	Nothing, not even the consent status	The consent status and cookieless measurements
If consent is declined	Nothing is sent	Cookieless signals are sent
If consent is given	Full measurement	Full measurement
Modelling of missing data	General model (less detailed)	Advertiser-specific model (more detailed)

The appeal of advanced is the modelling: using the cookieless signals from visitors who decline, Google estimates missing conversions with a model built for your account. With basic, those signals are never sent, so Google uses a more general model.

The price is on the legal side. With advanced, a request still goes to Google after the visitor has declined. It uses no cookies, but it is still a transfer of data, and opinions differ on whether that is allowed without consent. With basic, the question doesn't arise.

Which should you choose?

The right choice depends on your ad budget and your appetite for legal risk. Three questions help:

1. How much do you spend on Google Ads? With a large budget and conversion-based bidding, advanced's account-specific modelling earns its keep. With little or no advertising, basic costs you very little.
2. What does your legal adviser say about cookieless signals? Get the answer in writing before switching to advanced.
3. What is your consent rate? If most visitors consent, the gap between the two approaches shrinks.

On our own website we started with basic and recorded it as a decision: not a single request goes to Google or Meta before consent, and even Google Tag Manager only loads afterwards. Whether we move to advanced depends on our legal adviser's answer. The cost of this choice is more general modelling for visitors who decline; since we aren't running ads yet, that cost is small today.

How we set it up on our own site

We don't use a paid consent platform on our website; the cookie banner is our own code. Here is how it works:

Two categories, four signals. Visitors choose between two categories: statistics and marketing. Their choice is translated into Google's four signals like this:

Choice in the banner	Signal sent to Google
Statistics	analytics_storage
Marketing	ad_storage, ad_user_data, ad_personalization

Nothing loads before consent. Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics and the Meta Pixel aren't added to the page at all until the visitor consents. The Meta Pixel only runs with marketing consent.

Consent is recorded. The choice is stored in our only essential cookie and asked for again after 365 days. The record carries a version number: if the categories change, everyone is asked again. Visitors can change their choice at any time through the "cookie settings" link in the footer.

Visit counts without consent, behaviour with consent. We count total visits with a cookieless analytics tool that doesn't recognise individuals and so needs no consent. Which pages are read and where enquiries come from we measure in Google Analytics, only for visitors who consent.

Google Analytics settings. We keep data for 14 months, and Google signals and data sharing with Google are switched off.

What should a cookie banner look like in Europe?

Consent Mode doesn't collect consent; it passes it on. Consent is collected in the banner, and what a banner has to look like depends on the country. In Europe, meaning for visitors in the EU and the EEA, the benchmark is the report of the European Data Protection Board's Cookie Banner Taskforce, a joint effort of EU data protection authorities. It lists the most common problems, and four rules follow for Europe:

1. Put "reject" on the first layer. The vast majority of authorities consider it an infringement if there is no way to refuse on the layer that has the accept button.
2. Colours and contrast must not mislead. Whether button design is obviously misleading is assessed case by case. A bright accept button next to a barely visible reject option is a risk.
3. No pre-ticked boxes. Consent must come from the visitor's own action.
4. Withdrawing consent must be easy. Anyone who wants to change their choice should be able to do so through a link on every page.

These rules apply to visitors in Europe; elsewhere, local rules decide. The wording matters everywhere: which tools are used and why, whether data is transferred outside the EU, and that consent is voluntary.

How do you set it up step by step?

The set-up follows one of two paths depending on the approach, but both share three steps: a default state, an update, and linking tags to consent.

1. Set the default. As soon as the page loads, before any tag runs, all four signals are set to "denied". Skip this and tags may run as if the visitor had consented before they have chosen anything.
2. Update on choice. When the visitor makes a choice in the banner, the matching signals are updated to "granted". Because the choice is stored, the same update happens on later visits as the page loads.
3. Link tags to consent. In Google Tag Manager, every tag has consent settings. Google's own tags read the consent state themselves; for other tags, such as the Meta Pixel, you define which signal they need. Tag Manager's consent overview lists every tag with its signals in one place.

With basic, one more rule applies: Tag Manager itself, or the tags, don't load until the visitor consents. That is how ours is set up. With advanced, Tag Manager loads straight away, the "denied" default goes with it, and Google's tags run without cookies until consent is given.

If you use a consent platform, it handles most of these steps, but linking the tags to consent and testing the result is still your job.

How do you check it works?

The most reliable way to test Consent Mode is to behave like a visitor and watch what happens in the background:

1. With Tag Assistant. Open your site in Google's Tag Assistant, decline in the banner, then accept; at each step you'll see how the consent state and the four signals change.
2. With the browser's network tab. With basic, no request should go to Google Analytics or Google Ads when the page loads or after declining. If you see one, tags are loading before consent.
3. In your Google accounts. The admin areas of Google Analytics and Google Ads show whether consent signals are arriving for EEA users.

Test again whenever a new tag is added in Tag Manager or the banner changes; the most common mistake is a tag added later that runs without a consent check.

Can you measure visitors who decline?

You can't track the behaviour of visitors who decline with cookies; that is the whole point. But there are two legitimate ways to narrow the gap:

• Google's modelling. With Consent Mode, Google models missing conversions and visits into your reports, with a general model in basic mode and an account-specific model in advanced mode.
• Cookieless visit counts. An analytics tool that sets no cookies and recognises nobody can count total visits regardless of consent. It gives you volume rather than behaviour, but "How many people came?" no longer depends on your consent rate.

We use both: volume from the cookieless tool, behaviour from visitors who consent. That keeps our reports compliant and complete enough to make decisions. The role of measurement in advertising decisions is covered in our article on SEO vs PPC, and the full set of rules for shops selling into Germany in selling online in Germany.