Introduction

Tracking Consent shows a cookie banner on your event pages, registration pages, and Event Hubs. Visitors choose which optional tracking they allow, and Goldcast holds back analytics and marketing tags until they do. Use it to meet cookie-consent requirements such as GDPR for visitors to your Goldcast pages.

At a glance

1. Turn it on once for your organization in Platform Panel → Settings → Tracking Consent, and brand the banner.
2. Every series, event, and hub follows automatically. Change one only to turn the banner off there or to give it its own look or text.
3. Categorize your tracking tags as Analytics or Marketing, so each one runs only when the visitor allows it.

Before you begin

• Availability – If you don't see Tracking Consent in your settings, contact your Goldcast account team to turn it on for your organization.
• Permissions – To change Tracking Consent, you need edit permission for the organization, series, event, or hub you're configuring. Users who can only view that item see the settings as read-only.
• Start with your organization – Series, events, and hubs can't turn on consent until your organization-level settings are saved. Until you set it up, Tracking Consent stays off and visitors see no banner.

What visitors are asked about

The banner always shows these three categories. You can rename a category and rewrite its description, but you can't add, remove, or reorder categories.

Analytics and Marketing are independent. For example, a visitor can allow Analytics and block Marketing. Both start blocked until the visitor makes a choice.

How settings are inherited

Settings pass down from your organization: the organization setting flows to each series and to each Event Hub, and a series setting flows to its events.

• At the organization level, Consent protection is Enabled or Disabled.
• A series, event, or hub is set to Inherit (the default) to use its parent's setting, or Disabled to show no banner there, even when the parent has consent turned on.
• Banner text and the theme are inherited field by field. For example, an event can use its own banner title and keep the organization's colors. To go back to the parent's value for a field, reset that field.

Step 1: Turn on consent for your organization

1. Go to Settings → Tracking Consent.
2. Under Consent protection (1), select Enabled.
3. Under Banner theme (2), style the banner to match your brand. All of these are optional:
   1. Font family – pick a font, or upload your own (TTF, OTF, WOFF, or WOFF2).
   2. Colors – background, text, secondary text, policy link, border and divider, action (button), action text, and action hover colors.
   3. Corner radius – how rounded the banner and buttons are, in pixels.
   4. Banner logo – an image shown on the consent banner only.
      
      Select Reset to Goldcast default to restore the default theme.

4. Under Preview and content, edit the banner text directly in the preview:
   1. Switch between the Banner and Cookie settings tabs (1) to edit the first-visit banner or the preferences dialog.
   2. Hover over a highlighted field in the preview and select it, or pick it from Editable fields (2). Text is plain text, and each button label must be different.

The Banner tab covers the title, description, policy link label, and the Accept all, Reject all, and Cookie settings button labels. The Cookie settings tab also lets you rename each category, rewrite its description, and edit the Categories, Required, Always on, and Save preferences labels.

5. In Privacy or cookie policy URL, enter a link to your policy. It must start with https://. The policy link appears on the banner only when this URL is set.
6. Select Save, or select Discard changes to undo your unsaved edits.

Goldcast remembers a visitor's choice for 180 days. To use a different period (1 to 365 days), contact your Goldcast account team.

Step 2: Adjust a series, event, or hub (optional)

Every series, event, and hub inherits the organization setting, so you only need this step to turn off or customize the banner for one of them.

Events and series

Open the event or series, then go to Registration → Tracking Consent.

1. Under Consent protection (1), choose Inherit from [parent name] or Disabled.
2. The Banner theme (2) section shows a from organization (or from series) badge while the item follows its parent's theme. A later change to the parent's theme changes this item too. Select Customize to give this item its own colors, font, logo, and corner radius, or select Edit the organization theme to change the parent instead.
3. Edit any field in the preview to override its text for this item only. Fields you don't edit keep the parent's text.
4. Select Save.

The preview shows the banner in the event's language. In the example above, the event is set to French. 

A series page works the same way.

Event Hubs

Go to Pages, open the hub, and scroll to the Tracking Consent section. Choose Inherit or Disabled, customize the theme or text as for an event, and select Save.

Step 3: Categorize your tracking tags

When consent is on, each tracking tag in the Head and Body of your Tracking Pixels & Tags must say which category it belongs to. The page shows a reminder (1) while consent is on, and each tag carries a data-consent-type attribute (2):

<script
  data-consent-type="analytics"
  src="https://example.com/analytics.js"
></script>
<img
  data-consent-type="marketing"
  src="https://ads.example.com/pixel.gif"
  alt=""
/>

• A tag runs only after the visitor allows its category.
• The editor flags a tracking tag that has no category, and Goldcast refuses to save the page until every tracking tag has a valid category.
• Tags you saved before turning on consent keep running as Marketing until you edit them.
• A tag with any value other than analytics or marketing never runs.
• Tracking Consent doesn't affect tags that don't track anyone, such as data-only tags.

Custom JavaScript

Custom JavaScript fields contain no tag that Goldcast can categorize, so they always run. Wrap your tracking calls in a consent check:

if (
  !window.goldcastConsent ||
  window.goldcastConsent.categories.marketing === "allowed"
) {
  // your tracking call
}

Use analytics instead of marketing if the script is analytics. window.goldcastConsent exists only when consent is on for the page. Each category's value is allowed, rejected, or unknown (the visitor hasn't chosen yet).

Tag managers

Goldcast can gate the tag manager's own tag, but not the tags loaded inside it. If you use a container such as Google Tag Manager, add a category to the container tag and set up consent rules inside the container as well.

What visitors see

1. On their first visit, visitors see the banner with three buttons: Accept all cookies, Only strictly necessary, and Cookie settings. (These are the default labels.)
2. Cookie settings opens a dialog where the visitor turns Analytics and Marketing on or off one at a time. Strictly Necessary has no toggle.

3. When the visitor makes a choice, the page reloads and applies it. Until they choose, Analytics and Marketing tags stay blocked.
4. To change their choice later, a visitor selects the cookie settings button in the bottom-left corner of the page.

Goldcast saves the choice in a cookie on the visitor's browser. It contains no personal information and lasts for your preference lifetime.

When visitors are asked again

• When the preference lifetime runs out.
• When you change the banner text, the categories, or the consent setting. Theme-only changes don't ask visitors again.

Languages

The default Goldcast text appears in the event's language, and falls back to English if a translation isn't available. Text you write yourself appears exactly as entered, so translate it yourself if your audience needs that. Event Hubs show the default text in English.

Custom domains

On a verified custom domain that belongs to your organization, one choice covers all your pages on that domain. On other domains, each event or hub remembers its own choice.

FAQs

Q1: Can I add my own category, such as "Functional"? 

No. The three categories are fixed: you can't add, remove, or reorder them, and Strictly Necessary is always on. You can rename any category and rewrite its description.

Q2: Can Analytics or Marketing run before the visitor chooses? 

No. Both stay blocked until the visitor accepts them.

Q3: Does turning off consent for one event affect my other events? 

No. Disabled applies only to that series, event, or hub. A series set to Disabled also turns it off for events in that series that are set to Inherit.

Q4: What happens if Goldcast can't load my consent settings? 

Visitors see the default banner, not a page with no banner, so optional tracking stays blocked until they choose.

Q5: Do I need to change my existing tags when I turn on consent? 

Yes, before your next save. Existing tags without data-consent-type keep running as Marketing, but the page won't save until every tracking tag has a valid category.

Troubleshooting

If the issue isn't listed here, contact gc.support@cvent.com.