Cookie consent, in short
What is cookie consent? Why is cookie consent necessary? Why is it important?
Cookie consent is the interaction that happens on your website between a visitor and a consent management platform (CMP) that enables users to decide whether they will allow cookies to collect their personal data.
This interaction is a legal obligation under the EU’s strict GDPR cookie consent requirements, as well as a core obligation under Brazil’s LGPD, South Africa’s POPIA and other major data privacy laws around the world.
Cookies embedded on your domain by services like Google Analytics, Shopify, HubSpot and social media plugins are the most common way for personal data to be collected from visitors on your domain.
Even after the end of third-party cookies scheduled by Google for 2023, numerous other tracking technologies will still be in use, collecting and processing personal data from your end-users to power your domain’s analytics and marketing, as well as the data-driven engines of the digital economy at large.
In other words, cookies are a crucial component of any online business today, and tomorrow. That’s why cookie consent is essential to get right for your website.
In fact, cookie consent is no longer only a legal requirement, but has become a consumer demand and a metric of brand reputation with 71% of people saying they would stop doing business with a company if it shares sensitive data without their permission.
Bridging the gap between data privacy and data-driven business is one of the great challenges facing our digital infrastructures, and building lasting customer relations in a time when brand trust is declining comes down to smart and honest solutions that respect users and their data privacy.
Cookiebot CMP has automated the entire process of cookie consent for your website, so you can conduct your business with peace of mind and build strong customer relations based on true data privacy compliance.
Cookie consent with Cookiebot CMP
Cookiebot CMP by Usercentrics is the world’s leading consent management platform (CMP) that brings your website a fully automatic compliance solution built around an unrivaled scanning technology that detects 63% more cookies and tracking scripts than any other competitor CMP or cookie consent tool.
With a plug-and-play implementation that requires no manual on-site deployment, Cookiebot CMP is fast and easy to use, and comes with a high degree of customizability to integrate seamlessly with your website’s design and layout.
Just drop a line of JavaScript in the top of your source code and you will have automated your website’s compliance with most major data privacy legislations in the world in seconds.
The geotargeting feature of our CMP ensures that your domain always presents the right cookie consent solution to end-users based on their location and on the data privacy legislation in effect in their country or region.
As one of the few CMPs in the world our solution integrates seamlessly with Google Consent Mode that lets you run your preferred services (like Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager) based on the consent state of your end-users.
Launched out of the EU in 2012, Cookiebot CMP by Usercentrics is now a unique expert in data privacy compliance, and GDPR cookie consent compliance in particular, with a mission to make the digital data economy a more trusted and safer place for end-users and websites alike.
Learn more about GDPR and cookies
Get started with Google Consent Mode
Cookie consent, in detail
How does cookie consent work?
Cookie consent is deceptively simple – a user lands on your website and is presented with a cookie consent tool that allows them to say yes or no to the cookies and trackers in use on your domain.
These can be, among others, statistics cookies and marketing cookies that run behind your front page to power Google Analytics or Shopify or HubSpot – or whatever service you prefer to use to get insights into and run marketing on your online business.
But while cookie consent looks simple front-end, it’s very complex back-end – and almost impossible to manage by a website owner/operator on their own, without a cookie consent tool like Cookiebot CMP.
Why is that?
Well, of the cookies and trackers in use on any typical website today, 72% are loaded by other cookies, while 18% of cookies are so-called “trojan horses” – cookies that hide as deep as within eight other cookies – making them difficult to detect without a scanning technology like Cookiebot CMP.
Of these “trojan horses”, half of them will change upon repeated visits, which means that users can have their personal data harvested by different third parties every time they visit your website – making the EU’s GDPR cookie consent requirements an almost impossible tasks for you to be compliant with, unless you rely on the help of an industry-leading cookie scanner and cookie consent tool like Cookiebot CMP.
To be compliant with the cookie consent requirements of major data privacy legislations like the EU’s GDPR, Brazil’s LGPD and South Africa’s POPIA, you need to be able to scan your website and detect all cookies in order to control their activation based on the consent state of end-users.
That’s why it matters that your cookie consent tool is built with unrivaled scanning technology.
As an industry-leading cookie consent tool on the market today, Cookiebot CMP –
- Detects 63% more cookies than any competitor cookie consent tool,
- Discovers 66% more statistics cookies than any competitor cookie consent tool,
- Discovers 79% more marketing cookies than any competitor cookie consent tool,
- Classifies 81% of cookies detected, having the lowest number of unclassified cookies compared to any competitor cookie consent tool,
- Detects 58% more tracking technologies than any competitor cookie consent tool,
- Detects 77% more third-party cookies than any competitor cookie consent tool.
How to implement cookie consent on your website
With Cookiebot CMP, implementing cookie consent on your website is as easy as drag-and-drop and as fast as plug-and-play.
Cookiebot CMP is a SaaS (software-as-a-service) that is implemented on your domain straight from the cloud without any need for manual installation or on-site deployment. Drop the Cookiebot CMP script in the top of your source code and you’re good to go.
Saving time and resources on implementation, Cookiebot CMP comes with a high degree of customizability to make sure that it integrates fully with the design, layout, and aesthetics of your domain.
Control all settings from the Cookiebot CMP Manager and enjoy automatic geotargeting and cookie consent banners available in 40+ languages.
How to implement Cookiebot CMP on your website
GDPR and cookie consent
How to comply with the EU’s GDPR cookie consent requirements
The EU’s strict GDPR cookie consent requirements demand that you obtain cookie consent before trackers can legally be used to process personal data from users located inside the EU – no matter where in the world you and your website are located.
In general, most data privacy laws in the world empower end-users with rights to transparency and control over how their data is handled – but enabling your end-users to freely say yes or no to cookies is specifically central to the EU’s strict GDPR cookie consent requirements (and to similar core obligations in Brazil’s LGPD and South Africa’s POPIA).
GDPR cookie consent requirements
Here’s a list of the EU’s GDPR cookie consent requirements that all have to be met in order for your website to be fully compliant – and which Cookiebot CMP fully automates upon implementation:
- Prior and explicit consent must be obtained from users before any activation of cookies (apart from whitelisted, necessary cookies),
- Granular consent must enable users to activate some cookie categories and not others
- Consents must be freely given, i.e. not nudged or coerced in any way,
- Users must be able to as easily withdraw consent as they gave it,
- Consents must be securely stored as legal documentation,
- Consent must be renewed at least once per year. However, some national data protection guidelines recommend more frequent renewal, e.g. 6 months. Check your local data protection guidelines for compliance.
By signing up to Cookiebot CMP, you automate the entire GDPR cookie consent process on your website – without the need for you to do anything else. Simply implement the Cookiebot CMP JavaScript in the top of your source code and let Cookiebot CMP handle all GDPR compliance on your domain.
Learn more about GDPR and cookies
Learn more about the EU’s EDPB guidelines for GDPR compliance
GDPR cookie consent plugin
Cookiebot CMP also comes as a WordPress plugin that makes compliance with the EU’s GDPR cookie consent requirements fast and easy, so you can rely on bullet-proof compliance on your WordPress-based online business.
As a GDPR cookie consent plugin for WordPress, Cookiebot CMP comes with all its features, such as –
- unrivaled scanning technology,
- auto-blocking of cookies prior to end-user consent,
- granular consent management for end-users,
- automatic renewal of end-user consent,
- legally compliant consent storage and documentation.
The Cookiebot CMP WordPress plugin also works to support compliance with Brazil’s LGPD, South Africa’s POPIA, California’s CCPA/CPRA, Canada’s PIPEDA, Japan’s APPI, South Korea’s PIPA and many more major data privacy legislations throughout the world.
Learn more about the GDPR cookie consent plugin for WordPress
Cookie consent with Google Consent Mode
Making your website GDPR-compliant while optimizing your analytics data and ads revenues has become light-years easier with Google Consent Mode and Cookiebot CMP.
Google Consent Mode runs all your website’s favorite Google -services (such as Google Analytics and Google Ads) in one simple way: based on the consents of your end-users, managed automatically in full GDPR compliance by Cookiebot CMP.
Cookiebot CMP fully supports and integrates seamlessly with Google Consent Mode and making your website GDPR-compliant without breaking your analytics or marketing.
If users don’t consent to e.g. statistics or marketing cookies, Google Consent Mode and Cookiebot CMP enable your website to still retain vital aggregate and non-identifying measurements and modeling data, allowing you to display contextual ads rather than targeted ads – respecting user privacy while optimizing your website’s performance.
Google Consent Mode works perfectly with Cookiebot CMP to give you a super simple compliance solution for your entire website and all its Google-run analytics and marketing programs.
Get started with Google Consent Mode
Cookie consent, summary
Why is cookie consent important?
For your website, cookie consent is comparable to what sustainability and nutritional markings represent for foods and goods: something consumers judge a brand’s reputation by and look for when making a buying decision, as well as being a legal requirement under most legislations around the world.
A website’s cookie consent tool is subject to legal scrutiny by data protection authorities, who hand out fines for non-compliance. However, end-users and consumers are increasingly becoming critical themselves, and a brand’s level of data privacy is becoming increasingly linked to its reputation and ability to win over and retain customers.
Using Cookiebot CMP – the unrivaled cookie consent solution on the market – automates the entire technical and legal process of cookie consent on your website and enables you to feature trust-building data privacy technology to critical consumers looking to be treated respectfully online.
Bring data privacy and data-driven business into greater balance on your website with our solution– implemented plug-and-play with just a few lines of JavaScript.
We ensure compliance with the EU’s GDPR, Brazil’s LGPD, South Africa’s POPIA, California’s CCPA/CPRA, Canada’s PIPEDA, Japan’s APPI, South Korea’s PIPA and many more data privacy laws.
Our CMP comes as a WordPress plugin for fast and easy cookie consent compliance for your WordPress-based online business.
The CMP integrates seamlessly with Google Consent Mode for data privacy compliance without the loss of analytics and marketing.
Try Cookiebot free for 14 days – or forever if you have a small website.
FAQ
Website cookie consent is the interaction between your website and end-users in which they decide whether to allow cookies and trackers to be activated to process their personal data. Compliance for your website is mandatory under the EU’s GDPR cookie consent requirements, as well as under Brazil’s LGPD and South Africa’s POPIA, (among others). Using a cookie consent tool to automate this process is the most-used solution for compliance.
Yes, under the EU’s strict GDPR cookie consent requirements, you need prior consent from end-users before you are legally allowed to activate cookies and trackers that process your end-users’ personal data on your website. The same requirements for cookie consent apply under Brazil’s LGPD and South Africa’s POPIA, among others.
Cookie consent is required under the EU’s GDPR if your website processes personal data (such as IP addresses, search and browser history) from end-users located inside the EU – no matter where in the world your website is located. Cookie acceptance is mandatory for websites to obtain prior to any personal data processing under Brazil’s LGPD and South Africa’s POPIA as well.
Cookie consent is not required in the US (yet) in the same way as it’s mandatory under the EU’s strict GDPR cookie consent requirements. However, to be compliant with California’s CCPA/CPRA, Virginia’s CDPA and other data privacy legislations in the US, you need to scan and detect all cookies and trackers in use on your domain that process personal information, so you can provide end-users with full transparency and the choice to opt-out of having their personal information sold/shared with third parties.
A cookie consent tool is a software implemented on your website that automates the cookie acceptance compliance process around managing end-user consents for the use of cookies and trackers that process personal data on your domain. Website cookie consent is mandatory under the EU’s GDPR.
Valid and compliant GDPR cookie consent is a freely-given clear and affirmative action on part of the end-user that signals consent to the use of cookies and trackers that process personal data from them. Pre-ticked checkboxes on cookie banners or implied consent via continued scrolling is are not considered compliant under the EDPB’s compliance guidelines for the EU’s GDPR.
A cookie consent banner is an interface featuring a cookie consent tool through which end-users can see information about all cookies and trackers in use on your domain, including details about their duration, provider, purpose and technical specifications, and decide whether they will allow these to be activated or not during their visit.
Using a cookie consent solution like Cookiebot CMP, end-users can withdraw consent as easily as they gave it – a core GDPR cookie consent requirement in the EU.
Cookiebot CMP comes as a GDPR cookie consent plugin for WordPress and automates the entire cookie consent compliance process for you.
Learn more about the GDPR cookie consent plugin for WordPress
Cookie consent is necessary when your website processes personal data from end-users through cookies and trackers embedded on your domain, e.g. through services like Google Analytics, Shopify or HubSpot.
Try Cookiebot free for 14 days – or forever if you have a small website.
Yes, Cookiebot CMP automatically blocks all cookies and trackers on your website until the end-user has given their choice of consent through the cookie consent banner. Cookies are not allowed to be activated until end-users consent to cookies. Prior consent is mandatory under the EU’s strict GDPR cookie consent requirements, as well as under Brazil’s LGPD and South Africa’s POPIA.
Resources
Get started with Cookiebot CMP and Google Consent Mode
Try the new cookie banners from Cookiebot CMP
Learn more about the Cookiebot CMP WordPress plugin
Learn more about GDPR and cookies
Learn more about US data privacy laws
Learn more about Shopify and cookies
Learn more about Google Analytics and cookie consent
Learn more about Brazil’s LGPD
Learn more about South Africa’s POPIA