This document describes Ads Data Hub product and policy changes related to EEA user consent requirements. It is intended for all users of Ads Data Hub.
What's changing?
Beginning January 16, 2024, Google will update Ads Data Hub to include:
- A new attestation to indicate that you have obtained consent for data uploaded into Ads Data Hub
- New policy-isolated tables that split data out by Google services, and
- Updated templates to help you write queries that comply with our EU user consent policy
Why is Google making these changes?
As a part of Google's ongoing commitment to a privacy-centric digital advertising ecosystem, we are strengthening the enforcement of our EU user consent policy .
What do I need to do?
All customers:
- Beginning January 16, 2024, all Ads Data Hub customers, irrespective of region, will need to attest that appropriate consent has been obtained pursuant to the Ads Data Hub policies , complying with the EU user consent policy and the Ads Data Hub policies, where applicable, for any first-party data uploaded to Ads Data Hub by March 2024.
- Failure to do so could impact ability to use advanced measurement, ad personalization, and remarketing features.
Customers with EEA data:
- Beginning January 16, 2024, all EEA data will be split by Google service into new policy-isolated tables.
- Beginning March 2024, queries that do not use the policy-isolated tables will no longer return EEA traffic, and you won't be able to combine EEA data between Google services tables or across non-EEA and EEA tables.
To learn more about these changes, and what actions you should take, read the following sections.
Learn key terms
Google service:A product or a service, such as online advertising services, online search engines, and video-sharing platform services. Examples of Google services are Ads, Search, and YouTube. Learn more about Google services .
European Economic Area (EEA):The European Economic Area consists of the member states of the European Union (EU) and three countries of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA)—Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.
First-party data (1PD):First-party data is information you collected from your websites, apps, physical stores, or other situations where customers shared their information directly with you. To learn more, see Customer data in the Policies page.
Understand important dates
January 16, 2024Product changes begin to go into effect.
- All customers, irrespective of region, may begin to attest that appropriate
consent has been obtained, complying with the EU user consent policy
and Ads Data Hub
policies
where applicable, for any personal data
uploaded to Ads Data Hub. This acknowledgement must be completed by
March 2024. Learn how to acknowledge consent
.
- Errors will be present in the UI and API for disallowed cross-service combinations. Learn about changes to cross-service combinations .
- Ads Data Hub will dual-write EEA data in both the policy-isolated tables and the non-isolated tables. This lets you begin migrating your queries ahead of the cutoff date. Learn how to migrate your queries to use the new tables .
March 2024Product changes go into full effect.
- All customers, irrespective of region, must attest that appropriate consent has been obtained, complying with the EU user consent policy where applicable, for any personal data uploaded to Ads Data Hub. Failure to acknowledge consent or refusing consent acknowledgment results in the inability to use your first-party data (1PD) within Ads Data Hub. For example, you cannot bring in new 1PD or join existing 1PD with your linked ads data. All use cases, such as user-provided data matching and audience activation using 1PD, are unavailable. This includes any scheduled 1PD imports.
- Ads Data Hub will stop dual-writing EEA data, using only the per-service
tables going forward. See the section called Schema changes
.
- Saved queries using the old tables will no longer represent EEA traffic. Existing queries using the tables will continue to measure any non-EEA traffic.
- For any EEA data, you won't be able to join between Google Services tables, such as Ads and YouTube.
- You won't be able to join non-EEA tables with EEA tables.
Complete the user consent acknowledgment
To ensure you are able to use your first-party data in Ads Data Hub, you must confirm that you have obtained proper consent to share data from EEA end users with Google per the EU user consent policy and Ads Data Hub policy . This requirement applies to each Ads Data Hub account, and must be updated every time you upload new first-party data. Any one user can make this acknowledgement on behalf of the entire account.
To acknowledge consent from the consent warning banner or the first-party data consent dialog:
- Click Configure consent settings.
- In the slider that opens, click Yes, consent has been obtained.
To acknowledge consent manually or from a query validation warning:
- In your Ads Data Hub account, go to the Settingspage.
- Under First-party data use consent settings, click Configure consent settings.
- In the slider that opens, click Yes, consent has been obtained.
To view a record of consent acknowledgment changes:
- In your Ads Data Hub account, go to the Settingspage.
- Click Change history.
- Filter by type: Customer settings change.
Schema changes
Starting January 16, 2024, Ads Data Hub will dual-write EEA data in both the non-isolated tables and the policy-isolated tables.
- Saved queries using the non-isolated tables will continue to represent EEA and non-EEA traffic.
- You can begin to use the policy-isolated tables. To learn how to migrate your queries, see Update impacted queries .
- You won't be able to combine data between any of the policy-isolated tables.
- You won't be able to combine the non-isolated tables with the policy-isolated tables.
Schema changes for Marketers
EEA user data is split by Google service into policy-isolated tables. Non-EEA users remain in the non-isolated tables.
The following example uses the Google Ads impressions table to show how a table is split by Google service:
EEA users
Gmail
Network
Gmail
Network
Schema changes for Measurement Partners
All user data is split by Google service into policy-isolated tables.
The following example uses the Google Ads impressions table to show how a table is split by Google service:
EEA users
Networks
EEA users
Update impacted queries
To prevent interruption in reporting, you can update your queries to use the policy-isolated tables before enforcement is in effect. The following example demonstrates how to rewrite queries to be compliant with the consent requirement policy.
Consider the following example query, which counts YouTube impressions by
platform. Before March 2024, all YouTube impressions for EEA and
non-EEA users are grouped together in the google_ads_impressions
table.
SELECT
CASE
WHEN
mobile_browser_class
=
3
THEN
'DESKTOP'
WHEN
mobile_browser_class
=
2
THEN
'MOBILE'
WHEN
mobile_browser_class
=
4
THEN
'TABLET'
WHEN
mobile_browser_class
IN
(
5
,
6
,
7
)
THEN
'CONNECTED_TV'
ELSE
'UNKNOWN'
END
AS
platform
,
COUNT
(
*
)
AS
num_imp
,
COUNT
(
DISTINCT
user_id
)
AS
num_cookie
FROM
adh
.
google_ads_impressions
WHERE
customer_id
IN
UNNEST
(
@
customer_ids
)
AND
inventory_type
=
'YOUTUBE'
GROUP
BY
platform
If you don't have any data from EEA users, you don't need to change your query. It will continue to return non-EEA results. However, if your data represents any EEA users, you will need to update or create an additional query to find EEA impressions after March 2024.
By replacing the table with google_ads_impressions_policy_isolated_youtube
,
the following query counts YouTube impressions for EEA end users only. Note that
when you use this table, it is no longer necessary to filter by inventory type,
so that line can be omitted from the WHERE
clause.
SELECT
CASE
WHEN
mobile_browser_class
=
3
THEN
'DESKTOP'
WHEN
mobile_browser_class
=
2
THEN
'MOBILE'
WHEN
mobile_browser_class
=
4
THEN
'TABLET'
WHEN
mobile_browser_class
IN
(
5
,
6
,
7
)
THEN
'CONNECTED_TV'
ELSE
'UNKNOWN'
END
AS
platform
,
COUNT
(
*
)
AS
num_imp
,
COUNT
(
DISTINCT
user_id
)
AS
num_cookie
FROM
adh
.
google_ads_impressions_policy_isolated_youtube
WHERE
customer_id
IN
UNNEST
(
@
customer_ids
)
GROUP
BY
platform
Unsupported use cases
Don't: Combine EEA data with non-EEA data
Applies to: Marketers
Queries that combine EEA data with non-EEA data show an error message in the query editor and fail to run. For example a query combining the Google Ads impressions table (containing non-EEA user data) with the Google Ads YouTube impressions table (containing EEA user data) is not allowed, and fails with an error.
-- This query results in an error
SELECT
COUNT
(
*
)
AS
num_imp
,
COUNT
(
DISTINCT
user_id
)
AS
num_cookie
#
Non
-
EEA
table
FROM
adh
.
google_ads_impressions
AND
inventory_type
=
'YOUTUBE'
UNION
ALL
SELECT
COUNT
(
*
)
AS
num_imp
,
COUNT
(
DISTINCT
user_id
)
AS
num_cookie
#
EEA
table
FROM
adh
.
google_ads_impressions_policy_isolated_youtube
To clear the error, query the policy-isolated table separately. See Update impacted queries .
Don't: Combine EEA data across multiple Google services
Applies to: Marketers, Measurement Partners
Queries that combine the policy-isolated tables from different Google services show an error message in the query editor and fail to run. For example, a query joining EEA Google Ads Gmail data with EEA Google Ads YouTube data is not allowed, and fails with an error.
Note that you may combine policy-isolated tables from the same Google service across buying doors.
Do:
dv360_youtube_impressions_policy_isolated_youtube
+ google_ads_impressions_policy_isolated_youtube
Do:
google_ads_impressions_youtube
+ google_ads_conversions_youtube
Don't:
google_ads_impressions_policy_isolated_youtube
+ google_ads_impressions_policy_isolated_gmail
To learn more about impacts specific to Measurement Partners, see Inventory split migration guide .
