Send user consent

Report DMA consent signals with your installs and events

Before you start

For

App developers

Time

About 30 minutes

You need

• The Linkrunner SDK in your app
• A consent screen or consent tool (CMP) that runs before the SDK starts
• A way to tell if a user is in the EEA, the UK or Switzerland

What this consent is for

Google's EU User Consent Policy and the EU Digital Markets Act (DMA) require you to tell Google what a user agreed to before Google may use their conversion. Enforcement began on 6 March 2024.

It applies to end users located in the European Economic Area (the 27 EU states plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway), the United Kingdom, and Switzerland. It follows the user's location, not where your company is based.

Linkrunner forwards these values with every install and event it sends to Google. Report nothing for an in-scope user and Google has less to match on, so conversions can be dropped and campaign performance suffers.

By default Linkrunner sends nothing. Every signal starts as unknown until you set it, and unknown signals are left out of the request entirely. Linkrunner never fills in a default on your behalf, in either direction, so a user's consent state is only ever what your app reported.

Other privacy laws (India's DPDP Act, Brazil's LGPD, and so on) are separate frameworks with no Google conversion parameter. For a user outside the EEA, the UK, and Switzerland, report isEEA as denied and leave the other two unset.

The three signals

SDK field	Sent to Google as	Denied (0)	Granted (1)
isEEA	eea	European regulations do not apply to this user	They do apply
hasConsentForDataUsage	ad_user_data	The user refused sending user-level data to Google	The user agreed
hasConsentForAdsPersonalization	ad_personalization	The user refused ads personalization	The user agreed

Each signal is granted, denied, or unknown. Google treats all three as required whenever their value is known, which cuts both ways:

• A value you know must be sent.
• A value you do not know must not be invented.

Linkrunner drops any signal left unknown instead of sending it as a denial, so a choice your user never made is never reported on their behalf. Never map unknown to granted.

Google also requires lat (limit ad tracking), but you do not set it. Linkrunner derives it from the device. A missing advertising ID is not a consent signal and is never treated as one.

What to report

For users outside the EEA, the UK, and Switzerland, report isEEA as denied and leave the other two unset. The DMA does not apply to them, so ad_user_data and ad_personalization are not required.

Report isEEA as denied and leave the other two unset. The DMA does not apply, so ad_user_data and ad_personalization are not required for this user. Send them only if you genuinely know them.

LinkRunner.getInstance().setConsent(
    LinkrunnerConsent(isEEA = ConsentStatus.DENIED)
)

The two omitted fields default to UNKNOWN and are dropped from the payload.

Report all three from the answers your consent screen actually collected.

LinkRunner.getInstance().setConsent(
    LinkrunnerConsent(
        isEEA = ConsentStatus.GRANTED,
        hasConsentForDataUsage = ConsentStatus.GRANTED,
        hasConsentForAdsPersonalization = ConsentStatus.DENIED
    )
)

The values above are only an example of the shape of the call, not what you should send. Report whatever the user actually chose. Denying personalization while granting data usage is a normal combination, not a mistake.

Leave the signal unknown, which is what it is before you set anything. Linkrunner omits it.

LinkRunner.getInstance().setConsent(
    LinkrunnerConsent(isEEA = ConsentStatus.UNKNOWN)
)

This is the correct state before your consent screen has been answered. Call setConsent again once the user chooses.

Do not guess the region. If you cannot determine whether the user is in scope, leave isEEA unknown rather than assuming denied. Reporting a European user as non-European applies the wrong rule set to their conversion.

Collecting consent

A Consent Management Platform (CMP) shows the consent screen at first launch and stores the answers, or you can build the screen yourself. Either way, you read the answers and report them with setConsent.

Ask the user

Show your consent screen at first launch, before you initialize the SDK. Ask whether they agree to their data being sent to Google for advertising, and whether they agree to it being used to personalize ads.

Determine whether the user is in scope

Most CMPs detect this for you. Otherwise resolve it server side from the IP address. If you cannot resolve it, leave isEEA unknown.

Call setConsent before you initialize

Map each answer to granted, denied, or unknown, then pass them in. The first payload has to carry the right state, so this must run before init.

The values below are an example. Send what the user actually chose, never a hardcoded set.

import io.linkrunner.sdk.models.ConsentStatus
import io.linkrunner.sdk.models.LinkrunnerConsent

LinkRunner.getInstance().setConsent(
    LinkrunnerConsent(
        isEEA = ConsentStatus.GRANTED,
        hasConsentForDataUsage = ConsentStatus.GRANTED,
        hasConsentForAdsPersonalization = ConsentStatus.DENIED
    )
)

LinkrunnerSDK.shared.setConsent(
    LinkrunnerConsent(
        isEEA: .granted,
        hasConsentForDataUsage: .granted,
        hasConsentForAdsPersonalization: .denied
    )
)

linkrunner.setConsent({
    isEEA: "granted",
    hasConsentForDataUsage: "granted",
    hasConsentForAdsPersonalization: "denied",
});

await LinkRunner().setConsent(
  LRConsent(
    isEEA: ConsentStatus.GRANTED,
    hasConsentForDataUsage: ConsentStatus.GRANTED,
    hasConsentForAdsPersonalization: ConsentStatus.DENIED,
  ),
);

linkrunner.setConsent({
    isEEA: "granted",
    hasConsentForDataUsage: "granted",
    hasConsentForAdsPersonalization: "denied",
});

LinkrunnerSDK.SetConsent("granted", "granted", "denied");

Call it again whenever the choice changes

Consent is stored between launches, so the last value you set keeps being sent. If the user reopens your privacy settings and withdraws consent, call setConsent again or you will keep reporting the old answer.

Need help? Contact support@linkrunner.io