Disclaimer: If you're on Webtrends Optimize and have set yourself up properly, it doesn't.
What Is Consent Mode v2?
Consent Mode V2 is a Google initiative to help websites comply with privacy regulations/laws like GDPR, the ePrivacy Directive, Digital Markets Act, etc. It focuses on laws based in the European Economic Area and UK.
Working alongside your Consent Management Platforms, like Cookiebot and Onetrust, it ensures that tags only fire post-consent.
The goal is to get users away from the “ask for forgiveness later” approach to web analytics, and enforce standards directly in Google Tag Manager. That specific point is very important, as we’ll elaborate on.
Why Consent Mode v2 Matters to websites?
The goal of the exercise that is Consent Mode V2 is to get people to move from “it would be good to comply” to recognising that it’s mandatory and enforcing standards.
With it being so common to have tags in GTM, like Google Analytics, Floodlight, Ads platforms, Social Pixels etc., sweeping compliance becomes a sizeable shift in thinking.
And that, specifically, is the branch point as to why CMV2 does not (typically) affect Webtrends Optimize and may affect other platforms.
What Does Consent Mode v2 Do to AB Testing Platforms?
Consent Mode V2 affects several things associated with AB Testing platforms.
First, it limits access to localstorage and cookies if/until a user has consented. Most AB Testing platforms rely on client-side storage in some shape, to store things like User IDs, experiments viewed, behaviour recorded, etc.
Second, it stops scripts from firing completely if/until users consent. The impact of this is delayed execution, content flickering, potential sample bias, etc.
Many platforms provide a rather short-term-thinking response to “can we put your tag in GTM” where they respond with “yes of course you can”. This means that the options you have in Webtrends Optimize, like our Advanced Consent model with pre-optin rendering are instantly off the table with other platforms, if placed in GTM. Many platforms simply also do not offer this.
Why Consent Mode V2 does not affect Webtrends Optimize
For over 15 years, Webtrends Optimize has taken the approach of recommending we are not placed in async tag managers like GTM, and so over 99.9% of our customers do not have us in there. This means that our options like Advanced Consent mode are perfectly feasible in this CMV2 world.
Further – our strong, very hands-on onboarding team have made sure that every customer was fully compliant with privacy laws and have done so since their inception. This means that, for example, we do not require cookies/localstorage pre-optin (if we did, we’d be breaking these laws).
Early decisions made to ensure compliance have helped make sure our current users won’t notice any difference when CMV2 is enabled.
No Disruption, No Surprises: What This Means for Our Users
So, what is the impact of Consent Mode V2 for Webtrends Optimize? Nothing.
Everything continues to work, in exactly the way that it always has done, and users with Advanced Consent mode enabled continue to use our platform with all of the benefits they have enjoyed to date.
The Bigger Picture: Performance, Privacy and Trust
We at Webtrends Optimize believe our customers should enjoy a few key things.
The first is tag performance and solid user experience. In past blogs and help articles, we’ve been through exactly why our tag performs well, with a zero if not positive impact on metrics like CLS and overall performance scores in our controlled experiments.
The second is privacy and trust. This is not something our customers should need to stress over – with a few details in hand, the platform has genuinely first-class support and runs in a way we believe to be best-in-class for the environment of privacy, consent and opt-ins.
Final Thoughts
Looking back, we’ve found that Webtrends Optimize doesn’t try to dodge, overcome or circumvent privacy laws, consent management and opt-ins. It works with them.
We have been made a stronger platform, not more fragile, in the face of privacy laws like GDPR, ePrivacy and DMA.
Our modular tag was, and remains excellent in giving us and our users control over every little aspect of how we work on your website. And for that key reason, our solutions with Advanced Consent Mode remain best in class.
