Google's Limited Ads and TCF 2.0 Consent

If your sites use Google services like Ad Manager, AdMob, and AdSense, to comply with Google's EU policy, you have to collect explicit consent with IAB TCF 2.0 CMP UniConsent to display personalization ads or use user's personal data.

There is also a type of ads supported with Google's products not using user's personal data called 'Limited Ads'. It means serving non-personalized ads or no ads at all to the EU users without consent collected.

IAB TCF 2.0 purposes and legal basis

Most advertising services like Google are allowed to process personal information based on 10 IAB purposes:

1. Store and/or access information on a device
2. Select basic ads
3. Create a personalized ads profile
4. Select personalized ads
5. Create a personalized content profile
6. Select personalized content
7. Measure ad performance
8. Measure content performance
9. Apply market research to generate audience insights
10. Develop and improve products

There are two legal bases to process personal data based on GDPR: users’ consent or legitimate interest.

How does Google serve ads based on different choices at CMP?

Google serves personalized ads when all of the following criteria are met:

A user grants Google consent to:

1. Store and/or access information on a device (Purpose 1), (Not enabled by default)
2. Create a personalized ads profile (Purpose 3)
3. Select personalized ads (Purpose 4)

Legitimate interest is established and not rejected:

1. Select basic ads (Purpose 2)
2. Measure ad performance (Purpose 7)
3. Apply market research to generate audience insights (Purpose 9)
4. Develop and improve products (Purpose 10)

Google serves non-personalized ads when all of the following criteria are met:

The end-user grants Google consent to:

1. Store and/or access information on a device (Purpose 1)

Legitimate interest is established and not rejected:

1. Select basic ads (Purpose 2)
2. Measure ad performance (Purpose 7)
3. Apply market research to generate audience insights (Purpose 9)
4. Develop and improve products (Purpose 10)

Google serves Limited ads when the following criteria are met:

If Purpose 1 is not selected, Google will attempt to serve 'limited ads' not using personal data if you have a legitimate interest for Purposes 2, 7, 9, and 10 not rejected.

Google serves no ads when the following criteria are met:

If all purposes are rejected or Purpose 2, 7, 9, 10 are rejected, Google will serve no ads.

Google Limited Ads

Google have introduced limited ads (LTD) to give publishers the ability to serve ads in a limited way in the absence of consent for the use of cookies or other local identifiers. If you like to use Limited Ads on your website, you have to install IAB TCF 2.0 CMP like UniConsent CMP.

Based on Google: "If a publisher uses the IAB TCF v2.0 consent framework, we will attempt to serve an eligible limited ad when there is no consent for Purpose 1. Alternatively, a publisher can manually send a signal (see Implementation) and Google will similarly attempt to serve an eligible limited ad regardless of user location."

The following Ad serving modes are available to publishers with UniConsent:

Google's Ads serving modes

The top reasons why publishers choose UniConsent

1. High reliability
2. Lightweight and fast-loading, optimised for Google's Core Web Vitals
3. Technical support

About UniConsent

UniConsent is a part of Transfon's privacy-first User Experience Platform that serves tens of millions of users per day to provide a seamless privacy experience for both users and publishers in the age of post GDPR. Contact us to know more: hello@uniconsent.com