How to attain GDPR compliance by using Google Tag Manager

You can easily make your use of Google Tag Manager GDPR compliant with our cookie consent plugin. The GDPR Cookie consent plugin helps you to make your use of cookies and online tracking compliant with the EU-legislation on personal data and online privacy.

The pre-requisites for using Google tag manager are:

An account in Google Tag Manager (GTM),
Created a website container in GTM

Note:
The Google Tag Manager must be disabled from the dashboard prior to inserting the script into the theme or else the script blocker as a whole can also be disabled.

Following will detail the steps involved in attaining GDPR Compliance using GTM:

Create a Trigger in GTM
Insert GTM compatibility code snippet in the active theme

Create Triggers

The Triggers can be configured in the following manner:

From the GTM “Triggers” list, click “New”.
Choose “Custom Event” and enter an event name for the trigger, for example for category analytics you can enter the event name as “cli_cookieconsent_analytics”, in the field “Event name”.
Click “Save” to create the trigger and assign a name for the trigger, say Analytics.
This is how the trigger configuration pane will look like:

GDPR GTM Compatibility-Trigger Configuration

Repeat the above for each cookie category, for example, for non-necessary the event name can be given as “cli_cookieconsent_non_necessary”, and for marketing, it can be given as “cli_cookieconsent_marketing” and so on.

Now open the Tag configuration window and link the trigger you have just created from the triggering section. If any trigger was previously linked, it has to be removed prior to linking the newly created trigger. For instance, link the trigger Analytics with Google Analytics: Universal Analytics tag.

Click “Save” to create or update the tag.

This is what your final tag configuration pane will look like (except for the Tracking ID):

GDPR Consent GTM Compatibility-Tag Configuration

Finally, click “Publish” to push your changes live to your site.

The category associated in this manner will only set cookies if the visitor has accepted consent.

Insert GTM compatibility code snippet in the active theme

Next step would be to insert the code snippet into the active theme header file (header.php). The syntax of the code snippet for attaining GTM compatibility is as shown below:

In the above syntax, replace cookie_category_slug with the actual category slug name and replace EventName with the actual event name given while creating a trigger.

ie: For category analytics, you can insert the snippet in the following manner:

Note: If the category slug is a hyphenated word, then it must be replaced by an underscore. That is, for category non-necessary, the category slug can be entered as non_necessary.

For example, a sample code snippet with three categories (as specified above) will look like this:

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Create Triggers
Insert GTM compatibility code snippet in the active theme

This article posted in Auto-block cookies with Script Blocker, Documentation, GDPR Cookie Consent, Knowledge Base and tagged GDPR compliance, GDPR Cookie Consent, Google Tag Manager, WordPress

Written by

Shesna

Shesna is a technical content writer for WebToffee. She is familiar in working closely with the SMEs to break down complex technical information into a concise, easy to understand manner.

Comments (16)

Keesjan

March 12, 2021

Hi, is this on the roadmap to include as default or switch on/off in the wp plugin? I like your cookiewall solution but it lacks integrated GTM datalayer support out of the box.

Reply
- Mark
  
  March 31, 2021
  
  Hi Keesjan,
  
  Thanks for the feedback. We will try to add it in the plugin.
  
  Reply
Agnes

December 4, 2020

I am having troubles to get the info show in the data layer.
It would be great to have this included in the plugin, mapped with the categories we have, interacting directly in WP.

Reply
Jeff

October 17, 2020

Could I please know the callback function for Reject?

Reply
Jeff

October 16, 2020

I’m also looking for returning a callback for the Reject function. Does anyone have a solution?

Reply
Hans Palmers

October 16, 2020

How does the code snippet look like for multiple language sites?

The cookie categories are translated and therefore have different slugs, yet these slugs are needed to load the code snippet (?), to fire the events & trigger the scrips such as Universal Analytics.

Reply
- Mark
  
  October 17, 2020
  
  As mentioned at the end of the WPML set up guide for the plugin(check in our documents section), please make the slugs of the translated categories the same.
  
  Reply
Agnes LESAGE

October 15, 2020

Hi, it would be best if the code could be included in the header in WP plugin, and this way it could also be based on the categories we create.

Reply
Graham Carroll

October 7, 2020

Is it essential to add a cli_cookieconsent_necessary GTM trigger to fire the “necessary” cookies? Thanks.

Reply
- Mark
  
  October 9, 2020
  
  That would depend on the whole configuration. We cannot give a yes or no answer to that.
  
  Please submit a ticket via support for site specific assistance.
  
  Reply
Jimena

May 5, 2020

By using this solution with GTM, do I have to purchase the plugin or this also applies for the free version? Or the free version doesn’t allow to integrate with GTM ?

Reply
- Mark
  
  May 6, 2020
  
  It only works with the premium version. If you need to manage GTM with free version, you can add the script of GTM in head/body area under the Non-Necessary script area. There won’t be any granular control for the scripts inside GTM though.
  
  Reply
Maxwell Hogan

January 4, 2020

I have a solution for obtaining reject. All good.

Reply
- Andrew Wright
  
  January 9, 2020
  
  What is the solution?
  
  Reply
- Jeff
  
  October 16, 2020
  
  Hi, can you please share your solution?
  
  Reply
Maxwell Hogan

January 3, 2020

What is the function for returning a callback of Reject as well?

Reply

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How to attain GDPR compliance by using Google Tag Manager

Create Triggers

Insert GTM compatibility code snippet in the active theme

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Comments (16)

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How to attain GDPR compliance by using Google Tag Manager

Create Triggers

Insert GTM compatibility code snippet in the active theme

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Comments (16)

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