In response to European privacy legislation updates to support the Digital Markets Act (DMA), Google announced that customer profiles sent to Google Ads for customer matching must include consent/refusal information for each profile, or ads cannot be displayed to those profiles.
BlueConic customers sending profile information to Google Ads via the Google Ads Customer Match Connection must send consent status (granted or denied/unspecified). To do so, each instance of the Google Ads Customer Match Connection must be connected to a BlueConic Objective that has collected consent information for GDPR or UK GDPR. A profile can only be exported if it meets the requirement of (a) being in the segment you select in the export goal and (b) if the profile has granted consent to receive advertising.
What does Google Ads require for customer matching?
To comply with Google Ads consent policies, BlueConic profiles from the European Economic Area (EEA) and the UK should be exported with a consent status for Ad User Data and Ad Personalization. In BlueConic, this means the connection should be linked to at least one BlueConic objective that tracks this user consent information with the right legislation zone.
Which profiles does this requirement apply to?
The Google Ads requirements apply to profiles from the EEA and from the UK.
What changes are required to comply?
All BlueConic profiles being exported to Google Ads Customer Match must be sent with a consent status.
Does this change affect organizations outside of Europe?
It depends on where your end users are located.
This policy affects any organization that has end users within the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom. Organizations in the U.S. and rest of world that track profiles within the EEA and UK must address the new Google ad consent requirements.
However, organizations in the U.S. and rest of world whose users are only in North America or APAC can ignore these changes.
Note: This information does not constitute legal advice. Consult your legal team for decisions about privacy regulations that affect your end users.
When do the changes take effect?
March 6, 2024
What actions do BlueConic customers need to take?
Any Google Ads Customer Match connection that exports profiles from the EEA or UK should be linked to at least one BlueConic objective that tracks user consent information.
What is the temporary solution to keep advertising from pausing on March 6th?
To address the need to send consent signals for European Economic Area (EEA) and United Kingdom-based (UK) profiles to Google, even after the March 6th deadline, we’ve created a temporary “Consent Checkbox.” This one-click solution will be conveniently located in the configuration steps of the Google Ads Customer Match Connection and will allow you to send consent signals for profiles automatically, in the event that your profiles have provided consent.
What happens after the temporary solution?
The Consent Checkbox solution is designed to provide you with 6 months to evaluate how you record and store consent in BlueConic for both online and offline visitors while remaining fully compliant with GDPR regulations and Google Policy. After this six-month transition period, BlueConic will only send consent signals for profiles that have recorded consent via BlueConic objectives.
What happens if I do not add an Objective to my Google Ads Customer Connection?
If there is no objective attached to the connection, BlueConic sends a consent status of ‘unspecified’ (meaning, consent is not explicitly granted) for exported profiles. Google Ads will not enable ads or personalization for EEA or UK profiles that do not have specific permissions granted.
What if I am tracking consent and legislation zones in another system? How do I store those consent values in BlueConic?
See Add consent status to BlueConic profiles from an external system for details.
How can I tell whether my connection has an Objective or not?
In the Google Ads Customer Match connection window, open the right-hand panel. Check the Objectives widget to see the objectives linked to your connection.
How do I link an Objective to a connection in BlueConic?
See Adding consent Objectives to objects for instructions on adding an objective to a Google Ads Customer Match connection in BlueConic. For more information on privacy and consent objectives, see Overview: Using BlueConic Objectives for privacy and consent.
If you have any questions or concerns about this update, contact the BlueConic Support team (support@blueconic.com) or your CSM.
Once I have set up an objective to track GDPR consent, what consent status does BlueConic send to Google Ads?
This table shows various scenarios for the consent status sent to Google Ads based on different profiles' legislation zones and how/whether the profiles consented to various consent objectives.
| Consent Settings |
Profile legislation and objective consent
|
Is the profile exported? |
Consent status: Ad user data & Ad personalization |
Are ads served? | |
| Segment | Objective | ||||
| All visitors | Objective1_GDPR | GDPR profile Objective consented |
Yes | Granted | Yes |
| All visitors | Objective1_GDPR |
GDPR profile |
No | n/a | n/a |
| All visitors | Objective1_GDPR |
UK_GDPR profile Objective no info |
Yes | Unspecified | No |
| All visitors | Objective1_GDPR & Objective2_GDPR |
GDPR profile Both objectives consented |
Yes | Granted | Yes |
| All visitors | Objective1_GDPR & Objective2_GDPR |
GDPR profile Objective1_GDPR consented |
No | n/a | n/a |
| All visitors | Objective1_GDPR & Objective2_UKGDPR |
UK GDPR profile Objective2 consented |
Yes | Granted | Yes |
| All visitors | Objective1_GDPR & Objective2_UKGDPR |
US - New York (NYPA) profile |
Yes | Unspecified | Yes |
| All visitors | None |
US - New York (NYPA) profile |
Yes | Unspecified | Yes |
| All visitors | None | GDPR profile | Yes | Unspecified | No |
What about profiles that opt-out or refuse consent?
Note that you can also map consent status to to ‘Refused Objectives’ for profiles that opt-out of or withdraw their consent.
Where can I learn more about Google’s changes for European privacy?
See the Google Developer website for more information: Google Ads API for consent.