For advertisers who use Microsoft Advertising and who are located in or target users in the European Economic Area (EEA) or the United Kingdom, privacy laws require that they obtain the explicit consent of end users before collecting and processing their personal data.
Microsoft offers a solution to this requirement with the Consent Mode setting, which allows advertisers to still conduct accurate campaign tracking and comply with privacy standards. In the following article, we will discuss what these privacy settings are and how you can implement them in your consent management platform.
What is Microsoft Universal Event Tracking (UET)?
Microsoft Universal Event Tracking (UET) is a tool that is part of Microsoft Advertising, to track the activity of your customers on your website. The tag is created and then implemented site-wide on your website. The tag collects data about user interactions – such as clicks, page views and conversions – and sends this information back to Microsoft Advertising. With Microsoft UET you can also enable retargeting that is to re-engage users based on their behaviour, ensuring a more personalised ad experience.
However, in accordance with privacy laws like the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), when using the Universal Event Tracking (UET) Tag, you are responsible for ensuring that the user’s consent to the processing of personal data is obtained before any data is sent to Microsoft. Without this consent, certain UET features will remain disabled, potentially impacting conversion tracking, retargeting and other key campaign features.
For this reason, in regions like the EEA and UK, it is now mandatory to use Microsoft UET alongside Consent Mode,which ensures that user consent is properly collected and managed.
What is Microsoft Consent Mode?
Microsoft Consent Mode is a privacy setting that allows advertisers to tailor the behaviour of UET tags based on the user’s consent status. Based on whether the user accepts or rejects the processing of their personal data, for example through a cookie banner, Consent Mode then either grants or denies permission for those cookies to be set on the end user’s web browser. In practice, this means that tags will only track conversions where consent has been given.
Enable Microsoft Universal Event Tracking (UET) Consent Mode with consentmanager
Implementing Microsoft UET Consent Mode with consentmanager takes just a few steps. For a detailed step-by-step guide on how to set this up, please refer to our comprehensive help article: Working with Microsoft Advertising UET Consent Mode
By correctly implementing Microsoft UET tags via a consent management platform, you can ensure that consent signals are correctly transmitted and campaign data is accurately captured – while ensuring compliance.
