Consent Mode in essence is a mechanism that allows third party scripts to pass consent data to Google Tag Manager using the Global site tag (gtag) API.
This data can be used to conditionally load tags, or modify their behavior.
Consent Mode is not a Google service or product, it’s more like a consent API.
Consent Mode makes use of the dataLayer and only works with Google Tag Manager (or gtag).
Consent Mode is part of the larger Global site tag (gtag) API.
The Usercentrics CMP template tag registers default consent settings, so the consent mode script doesn’t need to be used. (No default consent on the page)
If you don’t implement Usercentrics CMP via the template tag in Google Tag Manager, you’ll need to add a script to your page to enable it.
The Usercentrics script sends updated consent data when these are determined.
Let’s have a look at it
<script type="text/javascript"> // create dataLayer window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; //Create the gtag API, so you don’t have to write dataLayer.push() and can use gtag() instead. function gtag() { dataLayer.push(arguments); } //Use the gtag method to pass default consent settings to Google Tag Manager. gtag("consent", "default", { ad_user_data: "denied", ad_personalization: "denied", ad_storage: "denied", analytics_storage: "denied", wait_for_update: 2000 // milliseconds to wait for update }); // This allows the data that normally would be stored in a cookie to be appended to the URL instead. gtag("set", "ads_data_redaction", true); </script> //The last part is the Google Tag Manager script. If you want to use Consent Mode as alternative to prior blocking the type of the script tag is "text/javascript". <script type="text/javascript"> (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start': new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0], j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src= 'https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f); })(window, document, 'script', 'dataLayer', 'GTM-XXXXX'); //replace GTM-XXXXXX with Google Tag Manager ID </script>
Default consent data in detail
Consent Type | Description |
ad_storage | Enables storage (such as cookies) related to advertising. |
ad_user_data | Sets consent for sending user data related to advertising to Google. |
ad_personalization | Sets consent for personalized advertising. |
analytics_storage | Enables storage (such as cookies) related to analytics e.g. visit duration. |
In addition to the consent mode parameters, there are the following privacy parameters:
Storage Type | Description |
functionality_storage | Enables storage that supports the functionality of the website or app e.g. language settings. |
personalization_storage | Enables storage related to personalization e.g. video recommendations |
security_storage | Enables storage related to security such as authentication functionality, fraud prevention, and other user protection. |