Consent Mode basic vs advanced, explained
Google Consent Mode comes in two flavours, basic and advanced, and the choice matters: it decides whether your tags stay completely silent until consent, or still send anonymous signals that Google can model from.
Basic Consent Mode
In basic mode, tags are blocked from loading at all until the visitor consents. On a decline, nothing fires and nothing is sent, so Google has no signal to work with and modelling is limited. It is simpler, but you lose more data.
Advanced Consent Mode
In advanced mode, the tags load but, before consent, send cookieless pings with no identifiers. On a decline those anonymous pings continue, giving Google enough to model the conversions and users it cannot directly see. You recover far more data, at the cost of a slightly more involved setup.
Which to use
- Advanced for most businesses that care about data, especially if a big share of visitors decline.
- Basic where you want the most conservative setup, or your CMP only supports it.
Either way it must be wired correctly through your CMP, and you should test that it actually works. Advanced mode is usually the answer to analytics dropping after a banner.
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