Google Analytics Consent Mode: Ensuring Compliance for EEA Visitors

Suppose your Analytics account is linked to a Google service that needs user consent and has visitors from the EEA. In that case, Analytics may warn you if it’s not getting proper consent for ads measurement or personalization. Analytics expects the following parameters to be set by the consent signal.

• Ads Measurement: Requires the ad_user_data consent parameter.
• Ads Personalization: Uses the ad_personalization consent parameter.

Check the list of data streams in each of your Google Analytics 4 properties to learn if they are receiving the required consent signals:

1. Go to Admin → Under Data Collection and Modification, click Consent Settings.

2. Select a Data Stream to check its consent signals.
3. View EEA Traffic Insights (if available) to see what percentage of your website traffic and conversions come from the EEA. Here you can check if Analytics is receiving consent signals.

4. Below the EEA traffic insights, you’ll find the following sections:
   1. Behavior analytics consent signals – This section shows which consent signals are active for tracking user behavior on your site and how they impact your analytics data.
   2. Advertising related consent signals – This section details each consent signal related to advertising features. You’ll see which signals are correctly set up and how each impacts your advertising capabilities.

Here, we see that the consent mode is not set up for the site, and in return, Analytics is not receiving any data.

There are two ways in which we can send consent signals to analytics using WebToffee’s GDPR cookie consent plugin:

1. Set up Google Tag Manager and GDPR Cookie Consent Plugin (CMP). Then, Google Consent Mode V2 in CMP will be enabled to collect ad measurement and ads personalization consent signals. For detailed instructions refer to the article:
   1. Configure GTM for GDPR Cookie Consent plugin.
   2. Implementing GCM v2 in GDPR Cookie Consent plugin.
2. Set up Google Site Kit in your WordPress site. Configure WP Consent API plugin, and CMP to collect consent signal. Google Site Kit will now collect ad measurement and ads personalization consent signals from the WP consent API plugin, which GA4 can understand. For detailed instructions refer article:
   1. Configure WP Consent plugin and Google Site Kit plugin.
   2. Implementing GCM v2 in GDPR Cookie Consent plugin.
   3. To set up GA4 in Google Site Kit, refer article: Managing Google Analytics.

When everything is configured correctly, following the abovementioned steps, Google Analytics (GA4) will start receiving consent signals.

Once the settings become effective, the data stream will show a message: “Receiving Consent Signals”. The image below shows the data stream status when the consent mode is “Active”.