Google Search Ads For Publishers (i.e. AdSense, etc) To Enforce Consent Management Requirements

Google announced late on Friday that starting on February 1, 2024, it will start to enforce the consent management requirements for Google Search Ads publisher products, such as AdSense for Search, AdSense for Domains, and Programmable Search Engine.

Google wrote, “In August 2023, we announced that we will require partners using our Search Ads publisher products (AdSense for Search, AdSense for Domains and Programmable Search Engine) to use a certified CMP that integrates with IAB Europe’s Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF) when serving ads to users in the European Economic Area (EEA) or the UK. View the list of Google-certified CMPs.”

This was suppose to go into enforcement on January 16, 2024 but now it will be February 1, 2024. “This announcement serves as an important update that we will now begin enforcement on February 1, 2024 and are providing partners with an additional tool to serve ads in certain circumstances if consent is not available,” Google added.

In fact, for a couple of days now, AdSense publishers have been getting notices about policy violations around this issue. There is a new thread at WebmasterWorld and several at the Gogle AdSense Forums with complaints.

Once enforcement begins, if you send our Search Ads publisher products an ad request for EEA or UK traffic, and it does not use a Google-certified TCF CMP, the product will serve ads only if you have implemented a new parameter in your ad request that indicates that you wish to allow ads that use an invalid traffic-only cookie & local storage on both consented and unconsented traffic. Partners are legally responsible for the tools they use to gather consent, including consent for how they use cookies & local storage in online advertising. Implementing this parameter is optional. You should consider whether to implement the new parameter, taking into account legal advice, relevant regulations and applicable regulator guidance. You can learn more about implementing the new parameter (called “ivt”) via the AdSense Custom Search Ads for Web developer site, beginning January 10, 2024.

Partners who choose to implement the new parameter instead of a Google-certified TCF CMP may see a decrease in their EEA and UK revenue. If neither a Google-certified TCF CMP nor the new parameter is present, then our Search Ads publisher products will not serve any ads. If you choose to implement a Google-certified TCF CMP, review Publisher integration with the IAB TCF v2.0 to understand which TCF Purposes we rely on.

Enforcement will begin February 1, 2024 on a small percentage of EEA and UK traffic, and will ramp up until we enforce across all EEA and UK traffic by end of February 2024. To minimize potential impact to your monetization, please ensure you have implemented a Google-certified TCF CMP by February 1, 2024.

For more details, see this help document.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Gogle AdSense Forums.