Google Consent Mode and the DMA
Google's policies as we understand them on 5 November 2026. See the overview for what these pages are and are not.
What Google asks
Google's EU User Consent Policy covers visitors in the EEA, the UK and Switzerland. If you use Google Ads, Google Analytics or other Google services there, you must obtain legally valid consent for cookies and for using personal data to personalise ads, keep records of it, name each party that uses the data, and tell visitors how to withdraw.
Consent Mode v2 is how your site tells Google tags what the visitor chose, with four signals:
| Signal | Meaning |
|---|---|
ad_storage | Advertising cookies may be read and written |
analytics_storage | Analytics cookies may be read and written |
ad_user_data | Personal data may be sent to Google for advertising |
ad_personalization | Data may be used for personalised advertising (remarketing) |
Without ad_user_data and ad_personalization granted, Google does not use
EEA visitors' data for ad personalisation, remarketing audiences or Customer
Match. Consent Mode has two ways to run:
- Basic: Google tags do not load at all until the visitor chooses.
- Advanced: Google tags load with everything denied and send cookieless pings, which Google uses to model conversions.
Since 15 June 2026 Google Analytics uses Consent Mode as the single control for the Google Ads cookies and identifiers it collects.
The Digital Markets Act (Article 5(2)) separately requires gatekeepers — Alphabet, Amazon and Meta among them — to have the user's consent before combining personal data from other services for advertising. Advertisers meet their part of it by sending Consent Mode signals.
Publishers that show Google ads (AdSense, Ad Manager, AdMob) in the EEA, the UK and Switzerland need a Google-certified consent tool that uses IAB TCF — see IAB TCF.
How ConnectWiz handles it
| What Google asks | In ConnectWiz |
|---|---|
| Consent Mode v2, all four signals | Set to denied in the first lines of your page, before any Google tag; updated the moment the visitor chooses. Marketing carries ad_storage, ad_user_data and ad_personalization; analytics carries analytics_storage. |
| Default before the tags | The inline part of the install block runs before Google Tag Manager and gtag. |
| Data minimisation when denied | ads_data_redaction is on, so Google ad requests carry no click identifiers while ads storage is denied. In GTM you can also tick url_passthrough in the template. |
| Records of consent | Every choice is recorded. |
| Advanced or basic | Google tags already on your page load before a choice, with everything denied (advanced). When ConnectWiz loads them with the tag manager (mode A), advanced is the default and you can choose basic. |
| Google Tag Manager | The ConnectWiz Consent template sets the same signals inside GTM (mode B) — see Google Tag Manager. |
| Checking it works | The scan has a Consent Mode checklist: defaults before the tags, all v2 signals present, denied before a choice, Reject all and Accept all reaching Google tags. |
ConnectWiz sets the Developer ID Google issued to it as a consent tool on every page that runs its consent code, so Google can see which tool set the signals.
What you still need to do
- Remove other consent defaults your site or GTM container sets for Google tags; two consent tools fighting over Consent Mode give unpredictable results.
- Run a scan after setup and after every container change, and fix what the Consent Mode checklist marks as failed.
- In Google Ads, check the consent status in the Diagnostics for your conversion tags after a few days of traffic.