Glossary
What is consent mode in Google Ads?
Melvin Salas1 min readVerified 13 October 2026
Short answer
Consent mode lets you communicate your users' cookie or app identifier consent status to Google, and Google says tags adjust their behaviour and respect users' choices. It is not a banner: Google says consent mode doesn't provide a consent banner or widget, and instead interacts with your banner to obtain visitor consent.
Google describes two ways to implement it. In basic consent mode, you prevent Google tags from loading until a user interacts with a consent banner, and when the user doesn't consent, no data is transferred to Google at all, not even the consent status. Google says conversion modelling in Ads is then based on a general model. In advanced consent mode, Google tags load when a user opens the website or app, and while consent is denied they send cookieless pings. Google says this enables improved modelling compared to the basic one, as it provides an advertiser-specific model as opposed to a general model.
Google says it uses these pings to model your metrics, and that to protect user privacy your tags need to meet a certain data collection threshold. After you've implemented consent mode for at least seven full days, it says Google Ads and Google Analytics may have enough data to report the uplift, and that the uplift numbers will only be shown when a slice's uplift meets the minimum data threshold.
Google's modelled conversions page says conversions are modelled for unconsented users, and that in the Conversions column it reports both modelled and observed conversions. Our reading, not Google's: an estimate in the same column as measured conversions is fair to bid on, and worth checking against the sales your business records before anyone quotes the total.
We check this on every account we run
Riibon ties Meta and Google Ads back to outcomes measured outside the platforms, payments and bookings, so the number a decision rests on is one the business would recognise. When the platform and the business disagree, we show both and say which one we trusted.
Ask the Riibon app what your own account is counting as a conversion. Access starts with a short call: we look at your ads together, then run them for you or set the app up with you.