Google Ads introduces App Consent Insights for enhanced privacy

Google Ads added App Consent Insights, a diagnostics view showing how many of your app users actually consent to tracking and what that does to your measurement. If your app campaign performance moved and you cannot explain it, this is where you look before you touch bids. It applies to app campaigns only, so ignore it if you run Google Ads for a website.

What App Consent Insights shows you

The view breaks consent data down by app, by platform, by region, and by traffic source, so you can find where a setup is losing signal rather than guessing.

• An overall consent rating. Excellent, Good, or Poor, as a quick read on the account.
• A live count of apps sending consented data. Useful for spotting an app that silently stopped.
• Conversion consent rates in a detailed table. Split between EEA and non-EEA users, which is where the gap usually is.

The signals it depends on

Consent Mode passes four signals, and each one governs something different. Google's documentation names them as analytics_storage, ad_storage, ad_user_data, and ad_personalization.

The distinction matters because you can have consent for analytics and still be missing the signals that let Google optimize toward conversions. That looks like an underperforming campaign and is really a data problem.

Why a low consent rate reads as bad performance

When consent drops, fewer conversions get attributed. Smart Bidding then optimizes against a smaller and more biased sample, so results get worse for reasons that have nothing to do with your creative, your keywords, or your budget.

That is the trap. You look at a falling conversion rate, you cut bids or pause campaigns, and you are reacting to a measurement gap. Check consent before you conclude the media is the problem.

What to do with it

1. Check the rating first, then the regional split. An account-level Good can hide a Poor in the EEA.
2. Confirm every app is sending consented data. The live count is there to catch the one that is not.
3. Fix the consent banner before optimizing the campaign. More consented users beats better bidding on thin data.
4. Lean harder on data you own. Consented signal will keep tightening, which is the argument for using first-party data in Google Ads.

All of this assumes your conversions are being recorded correctly to begin with, so it is worth re-checking how your conversion tracking is set up.

Google documents consent mode for app campaigns in its Google Ads help centre. Read the source.