Configuring Consent in Google Tag Manager

Current and upcoming state privacy regulations (e.g. CPRA, VCDPA, CPA) require organizations to offer consumers the right to opt in or out of a variety of data uses, such as data processing for sales, data sharing, and sensitive information processing.

Once you have configured and deployed your Privacy Center Consent Management, Fides allows your users to save their privacy settings according to your customized consent configuration, and uses these stored consent choices to enable or disable corresponding data uses.

Install the Fides.js script on your website

The Privacy Center hosts a customized script called fides.js that can be used in a given web page to access the consent choices a user has made.

To install this script on your site, the following should be included within the <head> tag of your page:

<head>
  <!-- Include before any scripts which need consent. -->
  <script src="privacy.example.com/fides.js"></script>
</head>

Attribute	Description
`privacy.example.com`	Replace this with the URL to your deployed Privacy Center.

Integrate Fides.js with Google Tag Manager

When using Google Tag Manager, calling Fides.gtm() will push the user's consent choices into GTM's Data Layer under a variable named Fides.consent.

To enable the Google Tag Manager integration, call Fides.gtm() in your website code:

<head>
  <script src="privacy.example.com/fides.js"></script>
  <script>Fides.gtm()</script>

  <!-- Include Google Tag Manager's script below. -->
<head>

See the end of this guide for more information on using Google Tag Manager.

Usage options

In any code which requires user consent, you can now check a user’s consent map under the Fides global variable:

if (Fides.consent.data_sales_and_sharing) {
  // User has opted in.
} else {
  // User has opted out.
}

Note that, in the above example, data_sales_and_sharing matches a key set for one of the consent options during your Privacy Center configuration. See the Privacy Center Consent Management documentation for more details on how to customize these options and configure other keys, etc.

Configure consent in Google Tag Manager (GTM)

The following step-by-step implementation will use the consent options created during your Privacy Center configuration. To begin, open your GTM console and select Variables from the navigation menu.

Set up a GTM variable

From the Variables menu, click New within the User-Defined Variables section.
Select Data Layer Variable (beneath Page Variables) as the type:

Set the Data Layer Variable Name to the corresponding cookieKey configured in your Privacy Center (Fides.consent.data_sales_and_sharing in this guide’s examples).
Give the variable a suitable, identifiable name, such as Fides.DataSalesAndSharing, as in the example below:

Configure a Trigger Tag for consent

Many third-party tools rely on you to correctly configure their tags to fire depending on user consent. A single consent trigger tag ensures that a third-party tag only fires when a user’s consent is appropriately set.

Create a new Trigger by selecting New from the Tags menu.
Select the appropriate tag type (e.g. Page View):

💡

Ensure you use the appropriate trigger type for your tag. If your primary firing trigger is Page View based, use the Page View exception trigger. If your primary firing trigger is Custom Event based, use the Custom Event exception trigger.

Give the trigger a suitable, identifiable name, such as Fides.DataSalesAndSharing.OptOut
Set “This trigger fires on” to Some Page Views.
In the “Fire this trigger when…” option, set the following:
- The event field to match your user-defined variable earlier (e.g. Fides.DataSalesAndSharing)
- The evaluation to equals
- The value to false

This new trigger event can now be added to your tags, and will ensure the tag is suppressed where the user has opted out (e.g. when a user’s consent preference has set Fides.DataSalesAndSharing to false.)

💡

You can repeat this step to include the condition on other types of triggers as you require them. For example, this condition could be on Custom Events, Page Views, Window Loads or Initialization.

Use a custom consent trigger on a tag

To suppress tags from firing where user consent has not been given, you can add your new trigger using the following steps:

From the Tags menu, select the tag you would like to apply consent checks to.
Under Triggering you can add, remove or combine triggers. In this case, you are adding an exception that will suppress firing where you do not have consent. Select Add Exception to add your newly created trigger.

Select the consent trigger created earlier (e.g. Fides.DataSales.Consent), which will add it as an exception to your tag:

You should now see your trigger listed in your tag as an Exception. If configured according to this guide, this tag will no longer fire if a user has opted out of Data Sales.

You can now repeat this on any tag in your GTM container.

Configure Limited Data Use for Meta (Facebook)

Meta's implementation of data sales is unique to their platform, and requires specific configuration in Google Tag Manager.

To implement the Limited Data Use flag, the following modifications to your pixel are required:

Add the line below before fbq('init', '00000000000');

{{Fides.DataSalesAndSharing}} ? fbq('dataProcessingOptions', []) : fbq('dataProcessingOptions', ['LDU'], 1, 1000);

This line checks the value of Fides.DataSalesAndSharing, and will opt a user out of or into data processing based on its value (true or false).

💡

If your Meta pixel is using the <noscript></noscript> for non-javascript browsers, remove this from your pixel. Consent management solutions, like Fides, rely on javascript; this pixel would risk firing, causing non-compliance.

Save your changes. Your Limited Data Use is now configured!

Configuring Restricted Data Processing for Google Ads

In order to configure Google's Restricted Data Processing flag, minor updates are required for the Google Ads pixel. Make sure you have completed your custom consent triggers before proceeding.

Edit your Google Ads Pixel:
In the dropdown list labeled "Enable Restricted Data Processing", select the appropriate variable that you created at the start (e.g. Fides.DataSalesAndSharing).

Save your changes, and repeat for any other Google Adsense (or similar Google integrations) that allow for restricted data processing options.