GTM template to use

Hi @dieterj, great question!

FAZ Cookie Manager ships with built-in Google Consent Mode v2 support via its gcm.js module, so you don’t need a dedicated GTM Community Template to make consent signals work — the plugin pushes them natively to the dataLayer automatically.HOW FAZ SENDS CONSENT SIGNALSWhen a visitor lands on your site, FAZ immediately fires a default consent state (denied for everything, or your configured defaults) to the dataLayer.

When the visitor accepts or rejects cookies, FAZ fires an update. GTM picks this up automatically — no extra template needed.

GTM SETUP FOR GA4 + GOOGLE ADSFirst, in GTM go to Admin → Container Settings and enable “Enable consent overview (beta)”. This lets you see and manage consent checks per tag.For the GA4 Configuration tag, use “Consent Initialization – All Pages” as the trigger, and in the tag’s Consent Settings require analytics_storage.

With Consent Mode active, GA4 will still fire on page load but will model conversions for users who denied consent (no PII collected). This is the recommended setup for GDPR compliance.For Google Ads Conversion Tracking, require ad_storage and ad_user_data in the consent settings. For Google Ads Remarketing, also require ad_personalization.

FAZ ADMIN SETTINGS TO CHECK

Go to FAZ Cookie Manager → Google Consent Mode in your WordPress admin. Make sure GCM v2 is enabled, and map your cookie categories to the correct consent types: Analytics → analytics_storage, Marketing → ad_storage + ad_user_data + ad_personalization.

Plugins like Complianz provide a GTM template mainly for users who don’t have native GCM integration.

Since FAZ handles this natively, you can skip the template entirely.If you’re using GTM to inject the GA4 script itself, just make sure your GA4 Config tag fires on “Consent Initialization – All Pages” — GTM will respect the consent state and apply modeling automatically.Hope this helps! Let me know if you run into any specific GTM configuration issue.

Hi @dieterj!

Two separate issues here, and yes let’s debug them properly — I’ll give you exact steps for each.

ISSUE 1 — BANNER NOT SHOWING

The most likely cause: your browser already has the FAZ consent cookie set from a previous visit or test. FAZ correctly hides the banner once consent is recorded.

Debug step 1: open your site in a fresh incognito/private window. If the banner appears, the plugin is working fine — you just need a clean browser state for testing.
Debug step 2: if the banner still doesn’t appear even in incognito, open DevTools (F12) → Console tab and run:

document.querySelector(‘.faz-consent-container’)
If it returns null, FAZ is not injecting the banner HTML at all. This usually means no banner is published in FAZ Cookie Manager → Banner.

If it returns an element, run:

window.getComputedStyle(document.querySelector(‘.faz-consent-container’)).display

If the result is “none”, the banner is hidden by JavaScript (likely because a consent cookie is already present). Check DevTools → Application → Cookies and delete any cookie named “fazcookie-consent”, then reload.

ISSUE 2 — GTM DEBUGGER SAYS “SCRIPT NOT LOADED” / TAG NOT FIRING

This is almost certainly because Google Consent Mode is not enabled inside FAZ.

When GCM is disabled, FAZ never pushes any consent signals to the dataLayer. GTM has no consent state to work with, so it blocks or skips tags that require consent.

To fix: go to FAZ Cookie Manager → Google Consent Mode and turn it on. Then map your categories: Analytics → analytics_storage, Marketing → ad_storage + ad_user_data + ad_personalization.

HOW TO DEBUG AFTER ENABLING GCM

Open your site in incognito (important — no stale cookies). Open DevTools → Console and run these checks in order:

Check 1 — is gcm.min.js loading?

document.querySelector(‘script[src*=”gcm.min.js”]’)

If this returns null, GCM is not enabled in FAZ settings. If it returns a script element, the file is loading.

Check 2 — is the dataLayer initialized?

console.log(JSON.stringify(window.dataLayer, null, 2))

With GCM enabled you should see something like:

[[“consent”,”default”,{“analytics_storage”:”denied”,”ad_storage”:”denied”,”ad_user_data”:”denied”,”ad_personalization”:”denied”,”wait_for_update”:500}]]

If window.dataLayer is undefined or an empty array, GCM is not running.

Check 3 — check the consent cookie state

document.cookie

Look for “fazcookie-consent” in the output. If you see it with “action:yes” or “action:no”, the user already gave consent — the banner won’t show again.

WHAT TO EXPECT IN GTM DEBUGGER WITH GCM WORKING

Open GTM Preview mode, then open your site in incognito. You should see:

– “Consent Initialization – All Pages” triggers on page load

– Your GA4 tag shows status “Consent not granted” — this is CORRECT behavior, not an error. The tag is wired up and consent-aware; it fires fully once the visitor clicks Accept

– After clicking Accept All on the FAZ banner, a “consent update” event appears in the dataLayer summary on the left, and the GA4 tag fires

If GA4 shows “Not fired” (instead of “Consent not granted”), the tag trigger is wrong — set it to “Consent Initialization – All Pages” and make sure Consent Settings on the tag require analytics_storage.

QUICK CHECKLIST

1. Test banner in incognito — if it appears, the plugin is fine

2. Enable GCM in FAZ Cookie Manager → Google Consent Mode

3. Run the console checks above to verify gcm.min.js loads and dataLayer is populated

4. In GTM debugger (incognito), confirm GA4 shows “Consent not granted” on load and fires after Accept

Share what you see in the console checks and I can help narrow it down further!

The syntax error is not a code problem on your site — it is a copy-paste issue. WordPress forum text converts straight quotes to curly/smart quotes, and the browser console rejects them. Type the command manually instead of pasting it:

document.querySelector(‘.faz-consent-container’)

But the real clue is this: no banner and no cookie at all.

That means FAZ is not injecting the banner onto your site. The most common reason: the banner has not been activated yet.

Please go to FAZ Cookie Manager, then Cookie Banner in your WordPress admin and check:

1. At the very top of the page there is a Status toggle (On/Off). Make sure it is set to On.
2. Click Save after enabling it.

Once the status is On, open your site in a fresh incognito window — the banner should appear immediately for any visitor who has no consent cookie yet.

If the status is already On and you still don’t see the banner, type this in your browser console (do not paste — type it) and share the result:

document.querySelector(‘.faz-consent-container’)

That will tell us whether the HTML is being injected at all. If it returns null, the plugin is not rendering the banner (template or caching issue). If it returns an element, the banner exists but is hidden somewhere.

Hi @dieterj, thanks for confirming — null means the banner HTML is never reaching the page, so something is preventing FAZ from outputting it
entirely.

A few quick things to check:

1. Do you have a caching plugin active (WP Rocket, LiteSpeed Cache, W3 Total Cache, or a server-level cache)? If so, please clear all cache layers
   and test again in incognito — a cached page served before the banner was activated would still return null.
2. Can you check the page source (right-click → View Page Source, then Ctrl+F for “faz”)? If you see faz-consent-container in the raw HTML but not in
   DevTools, it’s definitely a JavaScript conflict removing the element after load. If it’s absent from the source entirely, it’s a PHP-level issue.
3. Are there any errors in DevTools → Console or Network tab when the page loads? If you’d prefer to share your site URL privately so I can take a direct look at the page source, feel free to send it here or open a private contact.

Hi @dieterj, good news — the banner HTML is actually present in your page source, so the plugin is working correctly on the PHP side.

The issue is that it is not being initialised by JavaScript. Looking at your page source I can see you have Ad-blocker compatibility mode enabled in FAZ settings. There is a known bug in the current release that causes the banner to stay hidden when that mode is active — the JavaScript configuration object is not correctly passed through, so the banner never shows.

The immediate fix: go to FAZ Cookie Manager → Settings and turn off Ad-blocker compatibility mode. Save, then reload your site in incognito — the banner should appear.

A corrected version will be available in the next release. For now, disabling that setting is all you need.

Hi @dieterj, this is actually expected behavior with Consent Mode v2, and it is not a bug — let me explain the difference you are seeing compared to Complianz.

When Consent Mode v2 is active (which FAZ enables by default), GTM loads its container script on every page load, even before any consent is given. The debugger should connect as soon as the page loads. If the GTM Preview pane is not connecting at all, that usually means one of two things.

The first possibility is that the GTM container script itself is being blocked by FAZ’s script blocking feature. This can happen if you added the GTM snippet in Elementor as a direct script tag with a src pointing to googletagmanager.com, rather than using the standard inline GTM snippet. If FAZ sees googletagmanager.com as an external script src and it falls in a blocked category (analytics or marketing), it will prevent the container from loading entirely. To check: open your site in incognito, open DevTools, go to the Network tab, and filter by “gtm.js”. If you see it blocked or missing, that is the issue. The fix is to add googletagmanager.com to your whitelist in FAZ Cookie Manager → Settings → Script Blocking → Whitelist URL Patterns. Do not worry — whitelisting googletagmanager.com does not bypass consent or set any tracking cookies. The GTM container is just a loader, it does not collect data on its own. The individual tags inside GTM (GA4, Google Ads, etc.) still respect the consent signals that FAZ sends to the dataLayer, and they will not fire until the visitor clicks Accept.

The second possibility, which is more likely, is that the GTM container is actually loading correctly but the tags inside it are in “Consent not granted” state. In GTM Preview mode, tags that are waiting for consent appear differently than tags that are blocked or not loaded at all. With Complianz, you may be used to seeing those tags fire immediately in debug mode regardless of consent, which is a different (and less strict) approach. With FAZ and proper Consent Mode v2, the container loads on every visit but individual tags like GA4 only fire after the visitor clicks Accept. In GTM Preview, you should see the tag listed with status “Consent not granted” — this means the wiring is correct and the tag will fire as soon as consent is given.

So the behavior you are describing — tags not firing until cookies are accepted — is exactly how Consent Mode v2 is supposed to work. The GTM debugger itself should still connect before any consent action.

To confirm which situation you are in: open your site in a new incognito window with GTM Preview active. Before touching the FAZ banner, check in the GTM Preview panel whether you see “Consent Initialization – All Pages” triggered and whether your GA4 tag appears (even as “Consent not granted”). If the tag appears in Preview at all, everything is working correctly. If the Preview pane does not connect at all or shows no events, then the container is being blocked and you need to whitelist googletagmanager.com as described above.

Let me know what you see and I can help you take it from there.

Hi @dieterj,

Glad everything is working now. That was a good debugging session!

If you have a spare minute, it would mean a lot if you left a review for FAZ Cookie Manager.

Thanks again for the patience and for sharing the details that helped track down those issues.

Fabio