Consent Mode v2: what it means for your ad analytics

Consent Mode v2: what it means for your ad analytics

Basic vs advanced Consent Mode v2, how Google Ads and Google Analytics 4 (GA4) model conversions, how to check your consent banner, and the consent rules for Czech businesses and online stores, step by step.

consent-mode-v2

Consent Mode v2 passes the visitor’s consent choice to Google’s analytics and advertising code, known as tags, and adjusts how those tags behave. It is not a cookie consent banner, and it does not collect consent by itself. Implementing it does not confirm that your website complies with the law (Google Ads Help).

A conversion is a recorded action you want someone to take. A drop in reported conversions after a change to your cookie consent banner does not necessarily mean sales have fallen. Google’s explanation shows how restrictions on identifiers can change what can be observed. See Google Ads Help.

The practical approach starts by comparing platform reports with orders or records in your customer relationship management (CRM) system, then checking conversion tracking and attribution, meaning how credit is assigned to traffic sources. This approach is derived from documentation for Google and Sklik, Seznam’s advertising platform. Conversion modeling estimates conversions that could not be observed; it does not search for missing orders. See Google Ads Help and Sklik Help.

The documentation and figures in this article reflect what was available as of November 10, 2026. We state each figure’s verification limits and time frame alongside it.

Consent Mode works with a consent state obtained by another solution. It does not determine the banner’s appearance, or whether the visitor received the required information and made a valid decision. See Google Ads Help.

Google introduced two additional signals in November 2023 as part of v2. That date marks a product change, not the start of a Czech legal obligation to obtain consent. The implementation history appears in Google Developers.

Four signals, each with a different purpose

Google treats advertising and analytics as distinct purposes. The four consent signals below describe separate permissions rather than interchangeable versions of one decision. See Google Ads Help.

Table source: Google Ads Help.

Permission for one purpose does not authorize the others. With ad_user_data='denied', user-provided data is not used for enhanced conversions. This signal also affects conversion tracking through tags and certain conversion data. Personalized advertising requires both ad_user_data and ad_personalization to be granted. The consequences therefore depend on the particular signal; a refusal does not automatically stop every campaign. Google Ads Help describes these effects.

Google’s requirements are not the same as the law

For affected features serving users from the European Economic Area (EEA), Google requires appropriate consent and consent signals. The user’s location matters; the advertiser’s registered office alone does not determine applicability. Missing signals particularly restrict personalization, remarketing, audience activation, and some conversion tracking. Remarketing means reaching people who previously visited your site. See Google Ads Help and Google Analytics Help.

For advertisers, Google does not require verified consent signals for traffic from the United Kingdom and Switzerland in the same way as for the EEA. This distinction does not remove the need to obtain consent. It also does not describe the rules for publisher products. See Google.

Google’s documentation associates March 2024 with requirements affecting Google Analytics 4 (GA4) audiences and Customer Match (the Google Ads feature for using your own customer lists). Those references do not establish a single date when every advertising feature was switched off. See Google Analytics Help and Google Ads Help.

The Digital Markets Act (DMA) imposes obligations on gatekeepers. It does not directly require Czech online stores to install the specific product Consent Mode v2. Other consent obligations remain a separate question. See EUR-Lex.

A consent management platform (CMP) manages consent. Using Google Ads alone does not require an ordinary advertiser to choose a certified CMP. AdSense, Ad Manager, and AdMob operate under their own publisher requirements, which must be assessed separately. See Google Ads Help.

For personalized advertising in the relevant publisher products, the certified CMP requirement applied from January 16, 2024, in the EEA and United Kingdom, and from July 31, 2024, in Switzerland. Those historical deadlines do not automatically apply to an online store buying advertising. See Ad Manager Help.

Google offers two implementations: basic consent mode and advanced consent mode. They differ in how tags load, what data is sent, and which inputs feed conversion modeling (Google Ads Help).

Table source: Google Ads Help.

Modeling is not exclusive to advanced consent mode. Choosing advanced does not guarantee that modeling will become active. See Google Ads Help.

No cookies does not mean no data

A cookieless ping can contain the timestamp, the user agent (the browser or other client software), the referrer (the page the visitor came from), information about an ad click identifier in the URL, the consent state, a random number generated when the page loads, and information about the CMP (Google Analytics Help, Google Ads Help). This list does not describe every request. It proves neither anonymity nor lawfulness.

When analytics storage is denied, GA4 does not read or write analytics cookies. Advanced consent mode may nevertheless continue sending cookieless pings. Denying advertising storage similarly prevents advertising cookies from being read or written. Google describes IP address truncation for advertising products. See Google Ads Help.

For EU traffic, Google Analytics receives the IP address, derives an approximate location, and discards it. Google states that the address is neither logged nor stored. Receiving and using it during communication still constitutes processing. See Google Analytics Help.

For Google Ads, advertising click identifiers such as GCLID and DCLID are redacted from consent and conversion pings when both ad_storage='denied' and ads_data_redaction=true apply. This does not remove identifiers from every Analytics request. Analytics documentation allows the full URL, including identifiers, to be transmitted. See Google Ads Help.

Assess technical benefits alongside the legal requirements

Google’s technical comparison shows that advanced consent mode supplies additional modeling inputs. It may also transmit data before consent. Suitability depends on the actual implementation and applicable legal framework. See Google Ads Help and the Czech Office for Personal Data Protection (ÚOOÚ).

Before allowing transmission without consent, we recommend assessing the actual requests: access to information on the user’s device, any applicable statutory exceptions, and any personal data processing under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This recommendation follows from the distinction between those legal layers. The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) does not require consultation with a lawyer. See Google Ads Help, Zákony pro lidi, and EDPB.

Google Ads estimates unobserved conversions from observed data (Google Ads Help). It does not automatically restore full conversion tracking, and it does not produce a list of missing orders. Google points out that accuracy is limited when the model has no cookieless pings for calibration.

Modeled conversions are included in the Conversions column and, if you track values, in Conversion value as well. They also flow into downstream reports and bidding systems (Google Ads Help). The total column does not separate directly observed orders from modeled ones, so it is not a count of documented orders.

According to Google documentation, lower data volumes can limit modeling. Statistical estimation does not identify individual orders, and there is no guarantee that it will replace all missing data. See Google Ads Help and Google Analytics Help.

Three different Google models

To display behavioral modeling in supported GA4 reports, use the Blended reporting identity. The property must also qualify for modeling. Consent Mode must run on every page through an advanced implementation that loads tags even without consent. Selecting Blended alone does not activate the model. See Google Analytics Help.

For GA4 behavioral modeling, Google publishes the following volume conditions (Google Analytics Help):

Table source: Google Analytics Help.

Meeting these thresholds does not guarantee activation. They belong to GA4 behavioral modeling and must not be applied to Google Ads or every type of modeled GA4 key event. Modeled behavioral data is unsupported in, for example, audiences, User Explorer (individual user reports), retention reports (reports on returning users), predictive metrics, and BigQuery exports. See Google Analytics Help.

Check eligibility and confirm whether modeling is active

General Google Ads documentation specifies 700 ad clicks over a seven-day period for a country and domain combination. More detailed documentation gives a condition of 100 clicks per day and explicitly limits it to basic consent mode. The latter is not simply a daily restatement of 700 clicks. Its stated scope matters. See Google Ads Help and Google Ads Help.

A site below the click threshold is not necessarily excluded when using advanced consent mode. However, the exception to that click requirement does not guarantee active modeling for every advanced implementation. See Google Ads Help.

These two diagnostic statuses convey different outcomes. Google Ads Help

Table source: Google Ads Help.

The general diagnostic description does not cancel the explicit exception to the click requirement for advanced consent mode. See Google Ads Help.

Consent mode impact results are separate from a diagnostic status. Their availability depends on their own display conditions. See Google Ads Help.

Table source: Google Ads Help.

An absent impact figure may therefore have a cause other than modeling failure. See Google Ads Help.

Consent rates do not directly determine missing conversions

According to Google’s analyses, the share of visitors who decline consent cannot automatically be translated into the same share of unobserved conversions. The difference in conversion probability between consenting and non-consenting users varies by industry, conversion type, and consent rate. The higher conversion probability among consenting users describes a difference between groups, rather than the effect of consent itself on purchasing. See Google Ads Help.

The figures below come from Google’s own illustration and analyses. See Google Ads Help.

Table source: Google Ads Help.

Historical recovery figures need their original context

Historical Google announcements and a vendor case study use different bases. See Google and vendor case study.

Both Google and the vendor have an interest in adoption of their solutions. See vendor case study and Google.

For a separate discussion of the related technology, read our article on server-side tracking.

A banner can record a visitor’s choice while tags receive it too late. Google’s debugging documentation identifies the default consent state, consent updates, and execution order as key checks. Appearance alone cannot establish whether the setup works. See Google Developers.

We derive the following review process from Google’s documentation, ÚOOÚ guidance, and Sklik requirements: inspect the banner, the default consent state, changes after a choice, and tag behavior. Sklik needs a separate check. See Google Developers, ÚOOÚ, and Sklik Help.

Default state, consent updates, and storing the choice

1. 1
   Check the default state.Establish the default consent state before commands that send analytics or conversion tracking data. See Google Developers.
2. 2
   Check the consent update.Verify that a choice in the banner changes the corresponding consent states. See Google Developers.
3. 3
   Check how the CMP loads.An asynchronous CMP loads independently of other code, so its timing needs coordination. Google’s documentation describes wait_for_update for waiting for a consent update. Custom GTM templates should use Consent APIs (interfaces for working with consent). See Google Developers.
4. 4
   Process the update before leaving.Handle the consent update on the page where the choice occurs, before navigation or a reload. See Google Developers.
5. 5
   Preserve the decision.Your consent management solution stores the visitor’s choice and uses it to set consent states on subsequent pages. Consent Mode does not store that choice itself. Google’s documentation also allows regional default consent states. See Google Developers.

A default consent state alone does not confirm a working implementation. Google’s documentation for this procedure was last updated on October 13, 2026. See Google Developers.

Use Tag Assistant and allow for diagnostic delays

Google recommends Tag Assistant for checking the default consent state, updates, and tag behavior. This provides a technical check of the implementation. It neither constitutes a legal audit nor confirms that conversion modeling is active. See Tag Manager Help.

The consent mode diagnostic status in Google Ads may appear within 48 hours, although it can sometimes take up to 2 weeks. Those timings concern the diagnostic status, not a guaranteed deadline for additional conversion data to appear. Tag Assistant supports an immediate technical check. See Google Ads Help.

Google Analytics channel-attributed conversion data may be updated up to 12 days after a conversion is recorded because of processing and model training. See Google Analytics Help.

Situations from PPC ONE communications

Czech opt-in requirements for nonessential cookies have applied since January 1, 2022. Under Section 89(3) of Act No. 127/2005 Coll., on Electronic Communications, storing information on a device or accessing it requires prior, demonstrable consent. Exceptions cover operations technically necessary to transmit a communication or provide a service expressly requested by the user. The linked statutory wording is effective from November 1, 2026. That date does not mark the start of the opt-in requirement. See ÚOOÚ and Zákony pro lidi.

ÚOOÚ distinguishes operations on a user’s device from subsequent processing of personal data under the GDPR. Consent to cookies does not automatically provide a legal basis for every later use of the data. Each layer needs its own assessment. See ÚOOÚ.

According to ÚOOÚ, the rules also cover local storage and fingerprinting (recognizing a device from its characteristics), subject to the exception for necessary technical purposes. Preset browser settings do not replace active, informed, demonstrable consent covering the relevant purposes and controllers. A cookie wall that offers no genuine choice and makes access conditional on nonessential cookies does not produce freely given consent. See ÚOOÚ and EDPB.

ÚOOÚ gives first-party analytics as an example where legitimate interest may support subsequent processing. That possibility does not remove the requirement for prior consent to nonessential cookie storage or access. Nor does it automatically authorize every later processing operation involving the data. See ÚOOÚ.

The EDPB explains that Article 5(3) of the ePrivacy Directive (concerning privacy in electronic communications) can cover the tracking links and pixels it describes. Under specified conditions, it can also cover IP-only tracking. Whether consent is required also depends on statutory exceptions. A technology’s name alone cannot settle the question. See EDPB.

Refusing, withdrawing, and proving consent

Article 4(11) of the GDPR defines consent as a freely given, specific, informed, and unambiguous indication of the data subject’s wishes, expressed by a statement or by a clear affirmative action (EUR-Lex). Where consent is the legal basis, Article 7(1) requires the controller to be able to demonstrate that consent was given. Under Article 7(3), consent can be withdrawn at any time, and withdrawing it must be as easy as giving it.

ÚOOÚ says refusing nonessential cookies should be as simple as accepting them, available in the same layer, and presented with comparable visual treatment. Doing nothing or closing the banner does not constitute consent. These expectations do not mean that legislation prescribes every detail of a banner’s appearance. See ÚOOÚ.

In the EDPB report adopted on January 17, 2023, a large majority of participating authorities supported offering refusal in any layer that offers acceptance, including the first layer. This was not a unanimous requirement for a particular button placed immediately beside Accept. The distinction matters when interpreting the report’s position on banner design. See EDPB.

The EDPB report prescribes no single color or contrast standard, but design must not mislead visitors or cause unintended consent. Withdrawal can be made available through an easily accessible link or icon; a floating icon is not mandatory. Separately, ÚOOÚ warns against giving the acceptance button a substantial visual advantage. See EDPB and ÚOOÚ.

ÚOOÚ generally considers 12 months a reasonable consent period. After refusal, it advises against requesting consent again for at least six months from the banner’s last display. Exceptions include a significant change in processing or the user deleting cookies. These are guidelines with exceptions, not fixed statutory deadlines. The guidance was already documented in the annual report for 2022. See ÚOOÚ and ÚOOÚ annual report.

The ÚOOÚ annual report for 2025 states that the law does not prescribe a specific logging technique (a particular technical method for recording consent). Controllers must still be able to demonstrate that the visitor consented. See ÚOOÚ annual report and Zákony pro lidi.

Google calls for retaining at least the text presented, the choices, and the date and time of consent. It audits websites and apps. If noncompliance remains unresolved after an opportunity to correct it, Google may restrict audiences, personalization, and conversion tracking. These platform requirements do not prescribe a universal statutory log format. See Google.

Rules in force vs announced changes

Google announced a transition for linked GA4 and Google Ads accounts starting June 15, 2026 (Google Analytics Help). Consent Mode in Google Ads is to become the single control over how the Analytics tag and SDK (the software development kit used to implement Analytics) collect advertising cookies and identifiers. Later in 2026, ad_personalization is to govern whether GA4 data can be used for personalization in the linked Google Ads account. Google has not given an exact date for this second phase.

Google announced IP-based advertising conversion tracking and personalization from August 2026 for the EEA, United Kingdom, and Switzerland. The announcement concerns the rollout of this technology; consent requirements continue to apply. See Google.

The Digital Omnibus is a European Commission proposal from November 19, 2025 (EUR-Lex). It would move the storing and reading of personal data on devices into the GDPR through Article 88a and introduce machine-readable choices in Article 88b. The Council’s mandate of October 21, 2026, keeps cookies in ePrivacy (Council of the EU). The Commission’s text is a proposal, not an adopted law.

As of November 9, 2026, the European Parliament had not adopted its negotiating position, and the trilogue (the negotiations between the Parliament, the Council, and the Commission) had not started (European Parliament). The proposal has not changed the Czech requirement for prior consent and its exceptions (Zákony pro lidi).

What historical Czech enforcement data shows

ÚOOÚ inspects cookie consent banners. Historical findings concern consent, information, withdrawal, and whether websites respect visitors’ choices. See ÚOOÚ.

Table source: ÚOOÚ annual report, ÚOOÚ annual report.

These fines are neither current maximum penalties nor sanctions for a single violation. See ÚOOÚ annual report and ÚOOÚ annual report.

Sklik has required the consent parameter since August 1, 2024. A value of 1 means consent; 0 means refusal or no expressed choice. See Seznam and Sklik Help.

For consent=0, Seznam describes anonymized hit processing and modeling of some conversions. Reports can therefore include modeled conversions even with that value. The anonymization description is Seznam’s claim. See Sklik Help.

Sklik combines observed and modeled conversions at account, campaign, ad group, and device levels. Individual ads and targeting reports exclude modeled conversions, so their detailed totals may not match the overall figure. Modeling covers relevant traffic affected by ITP (Intelligent Tracking Prevention, Safari’s tracking protection) and conversions with consent=0. Sklik has included modeled conversions since April 19, 2022. These estimates do not recover individual orders, and a difference between reporting levels does not automatically indicate an error. See Sklik Help.

Seznam Event Measurement supports IAB TCF (a standardized framework for passing consent), as well as a mechanism compatible with Google Consent Mode v2 (Sklik Help). That support does not confirm that Seznam is set up correctly within your Google implementation. It needs its own check.

Our separate article covers Meta Pixel and Conversions API (the Meta code and interface used to transmit conversion data).

The recommendation derived from Google’s documentation is to make two separate checks: whether the implementation works correctly and whether modeling is active. Account for diagnostic and reporting delays when evaluating both. See Google Ads Help, Google Analytics Help, and Google Ads Help.

The practical next step is to revisit orders, customer data, and attribution. Before the review, establish whether you act as a Google Ads advertiser, a publisher, or a user of another platform. That distinction determines which rules apply. See Google Ads Help, Sklik Help, and Ad Manager Help.

For a broader business perspective, read our related article on marketing’s actual contribution.

We offer server-side tracking and cookies services. The service offering is listed on the PPC ONE website.

The PPC ONE website identifies Petr Kučera as the agency’s founder. His areas of work include PPC strategy, Google Ads, Sklik, server-side tracking, analytics, and GTM.