AdSense Specials

AdSense: GDPR consent and messaging

The announcement has been clarified in the meantime: You have until 15.1.2024 to make the changeover.

What does the GDPR mean for AdSense publishers?

The data protection requirements are high for you as a publisher in the EEA and UK due to the Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and everyone needs a solution for AdSense. Otherwise there will be AdSenseerror messagesand the playout of the ads will be stopped or restricted in the EEA and UK.

So there are a variety of solutions. The long-used cookie consent solution is probably no longer sufficient for many websites, especially if you also use Google AdSense. In practice, there is usually one of three solutions.

Consent Management Platform Software

If you enter the search query 'Consent Management Platforms Comparison' in Google, you will find a multitude of offers on the market. From small solutions to very large complex solutions. There are also ready-made plugins for WordPress.

From my point of view, these solutions are often good, but they have the disadvantage of high costs. Especially if you have many smaller projects as a publisher, they are not suitable for cost reasons, as the pricing models are usually charged per domain. The advantage of these solutions: You can also obtain other data protection-relevant consents, such as for analytics.

What's important now: Please note that the solutions are now also certified by Google as TCF-compliant. Here you will find a current list of all certified systems:

Google certified cmps

Self-programmed CMP solutions

Such solutions can be adapted very well to your own requirements, but the effort is usually very high. And the requirements are now increased again if you want to use the solution for AdSense. For one thing, your system has to prove TCF conformity and Google certification. You can apply for this, but I suspect that it is often an insurmountable hurdle.

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Google AdSense CMP

AdSense has its own free solution for publishers who use AdSense. This solution is easy to activate and of course it is also TCF-compliant and certified. Especially if you monetise many websites, this is a good solution.

The disadvantage: You can only use it to a very limited extent for other purposes. For example, you would need another solution for Google Analytics and it is not really 'fun' when two different consent messages are displayed. An alternative to Analytics, as I have just learned, is certainly Matomo, which you can also use without consent with a few settings. The AdSense solution may then be sufficient.

In addition, the solution does not seem to be 100% mature yet, as there are occasional error messagesthat seem to be due to bugs. I hope that AdSense will solve these issues in the future and that Analytics will also be integrated at some point.

Update 8.9.24

Automatic use of AdSense CMP

Some users received anemail from AdSense yesterday. It gives you three options to choose from:

• Option 1: Use a Google certified solution from another provider. As a kind of backup, if you haven't integrated a third-party certified solution by 16 January 2024, you'll instruct AdSense to automatically install their solution.
• The second option is similar: if you have not integrated another solution by 16 January you also instruct Google to automatically integrate the AdSense solution.
• The third option: You do not want to create a GDPR notification. The consequence of this is that no ads will be served in the EEA and UK from 16/01/24 onwards.

In the first two cases, AdSense will automatically take care of the integration. Of course, you can change this at any time and edit the settings afterwards.

My tip: The automatic integration is less work for you, but has the disadvantage that you get the 'default version' installed. With the help of thetutorialyou can adjust some of the settings yourself.

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