Being compliant with cookies without steering your marketing blind is possible — under three conditions. A truly compliant consent banner: nothing loads before the visitor chooses, and refusing is as easy as accepting. Google's Consent Mode v2 correctly installed, so your advertising tools respect that choice while continuing to work. And modeled conversions, which statistically fill part of the data lost to refusals. Compliance and measurement don't conflict: you build them together.

The framework has tightened on both sides. On the regulator's side, the Belgian Data Protection Authority (DPA) has made cookies a priority: its first thematic inquiry led to a fine of €50,000 for the media group Roularta for non-compliant consent (cookies placed before any agreement, pre-ticked boxes). On the platform side, since March 2024 Google has required Consent Mode v2 from all advertisers targeting the European Economic Area: without it, conversion tracking and remarketing degrade lastingly.

For a Belgian SME, the subject is doubly concrete: the DPA also handles cases from small organizations, and a badly wired banner can make half your statistics disappear without anyone noticing.

What the law requires in Belgium for your cookies

The rule fits in one sentence: any cookie that isn't strictly necessary for the site to function requires the visitor's prior consent. It stems from the GDPR and the Belgian law on electronic communications, and the DPA applies it without hesitation.

Which cookies require prior consent?

Exempt are the cookies indispensable to the requested service: basket, session, language, security. Everything else — advertising, social networks, personalization — requires prior agreement. The DPA recalled in its Roularta decision that statistics cookies cannot in principle be considered “strictly necessary”: your audience-measurement tool must therefore also wait for consent.

What does a compliant banner look like?

The conditions for valid consent are strict, detailed in black and white by the DPA:

• Prior: no non-essential cookie is placed before the visitor clicks. It's the first thing inspectors check.

• Unambiguous: a clear positive act. No pre-ticked boxes or consent inferred from mere browsing.

• Free: refusal must be as accessible as acceptance, “Refuse all” at the same level as “Accept all”. This asymmetry led in 2022 to fines of €150 million for Google and €60 million for Facebook from the French regulator.

• Specific and informed: the visitor chooses by purpose (statistics, advertising, personalization) and understands what they accept.

• Revocable: withdrawing consent must remain as simple as giving it, via a permanent link.

Consent Mode v2: what changed in March 2024

Consent Mode is the mechanism by which your site passes the choice expressed in your banner to Google's tools. Version 2, required since March 2024 for advertisers active in the European Economic Area, adds two signals dedicated to advertising: one allows (or not) the sending of advertising data, the other ad personalization.

Without these signals, Google considers consent absent: unrecorded conversions, remarketing lists that no longer fill up, automated bidding optimizing on incomplete data. Your advertising becomes more expensive and less precise, with no visible error message.

Basic mode or advanced mode?

Two implementations exist. In basic mode, the Google tags stay blocked until the visitor consents: the most legally cautious approach, with more general modeling. In advanced mode, the tags send anonymized signals, without cookies, even in case of refusal: finer modeling, but this sending is debated among European regulators. For most SMEs, basic mode with a Google-certified Consent Management Platform (CMP) is the reasonable choice.

Modeled conversions: keeping a compass despite refusals

When a visitor refuses cookies, your reports lose the link between the ad click and the purchase or quote request. Modeling fills that gap: from the behaviour of visitors who consented and aggregated signals, Google statistically estimates the missing conversions and integrates them into your reports.

The orders of magnitude published by Google are telling: Consent Mode modeling recovers on average more than 70% of the click-to-conversion paths lost to refusals. In an example documented by Google, an advertiser with a 50% consent rate saw only a 19% drop in recorded conversions. Aggregated estimates, with no individual tracking, sufficient to steer a budget and optimize your campaigns, as we do for our clients in Google Ads advertising.

The mistakes we see most often at SMEs

• The decorative banner: the banner appears, but the scripts load anyway before the choice. The most widespread error, and the first thing an inspector checks.

• The unfindable “Refuse” button, hidden behind “Settings” or in pale grey: consent obtained this way isn't free, so it isn't valid.

• Pre-ticked boxes, explicitly penalized in the Roularta decision.

• Consent Mode absent or badly wired: the CMP collects the choice but doesn't pass it to the Google tags. Apparent compliance, lost data.

• No record of consents: in case of an audit, you must be able to demonstrate who consented, to what and when — your CMP must record it.

Frequently asked questions

My site is a simple showcase with a form: am I really concerned?

Yes, as soon as an audience-measurement tool, an interactive map, an embedded video or a social-network pixel is present. The size of the company plays no role: only the cookies actually placed count. A site limited to strictly necessary cookies can do without a banner.

Does Consent Mode v2 concern me if I don't do Google advertising?

If there's no Google campaign or measurement tool on your site, no. But as soon as you use Google's advertising or analytics ecosystem with European visitors, the consent signal is required. If you are considering campaigns later, you might as well wire your banner correctly now.

Will I lose all my statistics if many visitors refuse?

No. You lose the individual detail of the visitors who refuse, not the overall picture: modeled conversions and aggregated data maintain reliable trends. Many companies actually discover they were collecting ten times more data than they used.

Priority action plan

1. Inventory: list all the cookies and scripts your site actually loads, before and after consent.

2. Install a serious CMP, certified by Google: choice by purpose, refusal at the same level as acceptance, proof of consents retained.

3. Block everything before the choice: no non-essential cookie should leave before the click. Have it checked technically.

4. Enable Consent Mode v2 and test that the signals arrive in your advertising and measurement tools.

5. Update your cookie policy and schedule a full check twice a year or after every new tool added.

Cookie compliance has become a professional standard: your visitors notice it, regulators check it and Google rewards it by preserving your steering data. An honest banner and well-wired signals: that's what separates the serene companies from those who'll discover the topic by registered letter.

A compliant banner is planned from the build of the site: it's one of the points we systematically handle in website creation, before going live.