What is Google Consent Mode?

Consent Mode is Google's framework for adjusting its tags to each visitor's privacy choices: when someone declines cookies, the tags send limited, cookieless signals instead of going silent, and Google models the conversions it can no longer observe directly.

Version 2 became mandatory for advertisers using Google's ad features with European audiences, and it's built around consent signals your consent banner passes to the tags. Without it, denied-consent visitors simply vanish from measurement and remarketing.

Even for US-focused businesses it's worth implementing properly: modeled conversions recover a portion of what consent choices remove, and the setup forces the tracking hygiene — a real consent banner wired to real tag behavior — that privacy laws increasingly assume.