As most people will now know, websites across Europe are required to gain explicit consent from their users before any cookies can be dropped for tracking purposes. To manage this consent, most advertisers will use a Consent Management Platform (CMP), which allows the website to show a message asking the user to accept or decline cookies. Some of the CMPs available in the market are linked to the IAB Europe’s Transparency and Consent Framework, meaning that if someone decides to decline cookies then a message will be sent to the Framework and will automatically deactivate the appropriate cookies from their side. But what if you are not using a CMP that is linked to the IAB Framework?
Tag setup requirements currently
If you have a range of tags that drop cookies, each of these tags will be identified as marketing, statistical, necessary, or personalisation. Each of these categories will have an event created on the website which can be used to exclude or include the category of cookies dependent on the user’s consent choices.
If the cookie exclusions are set at cookie level, allowing a user to exclude a single cookie from all of the marketing category cookies, then this setup can become laborious and requires constant updates every time a new cookie is introduced.
Google Consent Mode
For websites that are not using the IAB Framework, they have introduced a new feature called Consent Mode when advertisers are using either Google Tag Manager or the Global Site Tag. This will allow Google to automatically deactivate cookies based on the consent, meaning that little to no development work is required to ensure Google platforms are dropping cookies accurately in the future.
All Response Media viewpoint
At ARM we will always strive to support our clients in offering the most accurate and compliant media possible. Many advertisers may use a CMP, but many others are using internal solutions to help manage cookie consent. If one of our clients uses a bespoke solution, we can offer very little guidance on how this needs to be set up and deployed on the website, due to legal implications. Therefore, the use of an automatic cookie management system seems to be the way forward. Because these solutions are readily available in the platforms we regularly manage for our clients, this is something that ARM can offer some support in setting up alongside our clients, hopefully making the whole process easier and less labour intensive moving forward.
It is important to note that these features are only available for Google products, so if you use a large range of 3rd party media suppliers or cookies, then a bespoke solution would still be required for non-Google consent.
Read more information on our digital services.