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When Google's tags load
How Google Analytics, Google Ads and Tag Manager learn each visitor's choice, and whether Tag Manager waits for it.
Does Google Consent Mode matter?
Yes, if you use Google Ads or Analytics and have visitors in the EEA, UK or Switzerland. Google requires consent signals from them to keep measurement, ad personalisation and remarketing. We send them for you.
We recommend
Straight away, no cookies until a visitor agrees.
Google's tags store nothing until a visitor agrees, and their cookieless pings let Google estimate what it can't see.
You don't need to change this unless your lawyer says Tag Manager itself must wait.
When you'd choose otherwise
- Choose Basic mode (Tag Manager waits until a visitor agrees) if your counsel says nothing from Google may load before consent. A German court (VG Hannover, 19 March 2025) held that storing Tag Manager's script on a visitor's device before consent broke § 25 TDDDG.
- Some EU regulators say the cookieless pings need consent too, because they still reach Google before a visitor answers. If your counsel agrees, choose Basic mode: nothing from Google loads until a yes.
- What Basic mode costs: visits where nobody answers aren't measured at all, and a first visit waits for your banner's rules. If our script can't load, Tag Manager doesn't either.
- If you don't use any Google tag, none of this affects you.
What visitors see, region by region
- UK
- Google's tags start with every signal denied and send only cookieless pings until the visitor agrees. In Basic mode, Tag Manager waits instead.
- EU and EEA
- As the UK.
- Germany
- As the UK.
- California
- Signals start denied for the moment your rules take to load, then are granted until the visitor says no. Basic mode never holds Tag Manager here.
- Other US states
- As California.
- Browser sends the privacy signal (GPC)
- In California and Colorado, Connecticut, Texas, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Minnesota, Oregon, Delaware, Nebraska and Maryland, signals stay denied. In other US states, as California.
- Brazil
- As the UK.
- Everywhere else
- As California. In Switzerland, Quebec, China, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Vietnam, as the UK.
For developers
- Every page view starts with Google's consent signals denied, set by our tag before Tag Manager runs; if our script can't load, its fallback sets them denied anyway. This is Google Consent Mode v2, and our default is what Google calls advanced mode.
- Three optional extras sit in the editor: URL passthrough, ad data redaction and region-scoped defaults. Region-scoped defaults grant US visitors before any request, so they are off by default: if our script never loaded, those visitors would stay granted with no way to say no.