In today’s privacy conscious digital landscape, getting cookie consent right is no longer optional it’s absolutely essential. Whether you’re looking to comply with GDPR, the ePrivacy Directive, or similar global regulations, a Consent Management Platform (CMP) is a key part of your website infrastructure.

But here’s the twist: while most CMPs offer a built-in interface to control consent behaviour, you might be better off managing your CMP through Google Tag Manager (GTM) instead.

Why? Because doing so gives you greater flexibility, better compliance, and crucially, the ability to collect useful, privacy-friendly data even when users decline consent.

Here’s why it matters.

What Does a CMP Do?

A CMP (Consent Management Platform) acts as the gatekeeper for cookie tracking on your site. It displays the familiar consent banner or pop up, records what users agree (or don’t agree) to, and determines whether marketing or analytics tags should be allowed to run.

In short: it helps you stay compliant and builds trust with your users.

Why Manage Your CMP Through GTM?

While your CMP’s native dashboard might seem like the natural place to manage consent, there are real advantages to integrating it with Google Tag Manager instead:

1. One Place to Control All Your Tags

GTM gives you a central control panel for every script running on your site from Google Analytics and Meta Pixel to Hotjar and TikTok.

If you configure your CMP through GTM, you can manage all your tracking tags and consent logic in one place. This removes duplication and simplifies maintenance, especially across complex multi-market sites.

2. More Flexibility With Custom Logic

GTM’s triggers, variables and tag sequencing let you build custom rules around consent.

Want to fire a tag only when a user agrees to marketing cookies and has landed on a specific campaign page? GTM makes that possible. Most CMP dashboards, on the other hand, offer much more limited conditional logic.

3. Improved Compliance with Google Consent Mode

By managing your CMP through GTM, you can also implement Google Consent Mode, which dynamically adjusts how your tags behave based on the user’s consent choices.

Consent Mode ensures that your Google tags (like GA4 and Google Ads) respect user privacy while still collecting meaningful, aggregated data. It’s a critical step in staying compliant with both EU and global data privacy standards.

4. Easier Maintenance Over Time

When your cookie preferences are tied into GTM, you’re not reliant on your CMP vendor for every little change.

Need to update how you trigger analytics? Want to roll out a new marketing tag? You can handle all of that directly in GTM, meaning there’s no need to dig through your CMP’s console or rely on technical support.

5. Data Collection Without Cookies (Using Cookieless Pings)

Here’s the hidden gem: even when users decline cookies, you can still get privacy-friendly signals using cookieless pings; lightweight, non-identifying data that informs tools like Google Analytics and Google Ads of basic interactions (like a page view or conversion).

This is only possible when you configure Consent Mode properly and GTM is currently the best way to do that.

Managing your CMP through GTM allows you to:

• Set default consent states before user interaction
• Dynamically update those states when consent is given or declined
• Collect aggregated, anonymised data even without cookies helping you keep some visibility on performance

In contrast, many CMPs don’t support cookieless pings when set up via their native interfaces, or don’t give you the tools to manage Consent Mode properly. That’s a missed opportunity, especially as third-party cookies are phased out.

So… Should Marketers Use GTM to Manage Cookie Consent?

If you care about data integrity, flexibility, and staying ahead of privacy compliance changes then yes.

While native CMP consoles can work for simpler setups, using GTM gives you much more control, and allows you to implement Consent Mode in a way that’s both privacy-first and data-smart.

For marketers, that means:

• Confidence your site is compliant
• Visibility into user behaviour (even when cookies are declined)
• Less reliance on developers for tag updates

Need Help?

Implementing consent through GTM might sound technical and it can be. But once it’s set up correctly, your marketing team gets a more powerful, flexible and future-proof foundation for tracking and compliance.

If you’re not sure where to start, or want a second opinion on your current setup, get in touch with our team. We’ve helped businesses of all sizes implement CMPs and Consent Mode in a way that works for both compliance teams and marketing goals.