If you're still relying on cookie-based targeting in the U.S. without thinking about consent, you're basically flying blind in 2025. With varying consent thresholds between states, your cookie-based tracking may misfire or not fire at all. As a result, you get fragmented audiences, lost conversions, wasted spend, and compliance vulnerabilities.
This is the reality facing every performance marketer in 2025. The question isn't whether you need to change your approach, but how quickly you can implement the necessary fixes before your campaigns become collateral damage in the privacy shift.
The fundamental idea: precision in 2025 isn't about better targeting, but about smarter compliance. With over 20 states now enforcing comprehensive privacy laws, each with their own consent requirements and enforcement mechanisms, the old playbook is not helpful.
California's CCPA and CPRA set the initial standard, but the landscape has expanded with states like Colorado, Connecticut, and Virginia implementing similar frameworks, while others like New Jersey and Delaware have introduced even stricter requirements for sensitive data. They all punish outdated tracking practices and reward privacy-conscious marketing strategies.
Note that Global Privacy Control (GPC) is a legally binding opt-out in multiple states. While the technical implementation must-haves include:
The problems created by this patchwork regulatory environment aren't always visible in campaign dashboards. They manifest in subtle but potentially harmful ways. Let’s break them down and find ways to up your performance marketing efforts.
Attribution Black Holes
When users in GPC-enforced states automatically opt out of tracking, your attribution models lose critical data points. Last-click attribution becomes unreliable as significant chunks of your conversion paths disappear. As a result of that, you're optimizing based on incomplete data, essentially flying blind while thinking you have perfect visibility.
Audience Fragmentation
Consider a typical retargeting campaign: a user from California who engaged with your content but has GPC on becomes invisible to your tracking. Meanwhile, a New Jersey user who didn't opt in for sensitive data tracking still appears in your audience pools, creating compliance risks. This fragmentation means your “targeted” audiences are actually full of holes and potential violations.
Budget Bleed
The most devastating impact is financial, but it’s often hard to detect outright. When you can't properly track opted-out users, you're essentially paying for impressions that can't be attributed, clicks that disappear from your funnel, and retargeting incomplete audiences. This isn't just inefficiency, it's actively setting money on fire while your competitors allocate their budgets more wisely.
State-by-state privacy rules and browser signals have fractured what used to be a single, unified U.S. audience. Here’s why you need to update your approach immediately.
Advertising campaigns often assume a homogenous U.S. audience, but state gaps in consent mean each user might be treated differently. A user in New Jersey may need explicit opt-in for sensitive data, while another in California may silently opt out of ad tracking via GPC. If tagging, targeting, or retargeting doesn’t incorporate this mosaic of consent signals, your campaigns may:
Your Consent Management Platform (CMP) and tracking setup pulled from 2023 won’t cut it. Top-tier CMPs like OneTrust and Didomi now offer built-in logic for multi-state obligations.Â
You need opt-in screens for sensitive data in states like NJ and DE, opt-out banners for targeted ads in CA, CT, CO, VA, and GPC detection and enforcement, on both client and server side.Â
Without this sophistication, campaigns operate in blind spots. Each untracked user weakens your performance signal and distorts optimization.
Consent signals aren’t just for data collection, they’re signals about what you can’t measure. When users opt out, the last-click attribution becomes incomplete, while retargeting pools shrink and ML models see noisy or missing data inputs. You can’t optimize what you can’t measure. That’s why missing consent information undermines bid management, conversion modeling, and budget pacing.
Paying for impressions and clicks that cannot be properly attributed or retargeted will become your reality in a compliance loophole. Performance metrics become inflated, for example, you will see “engaged” users you can’t actually reach again. And it’s not just about overspend either, but about wasting budget on illusions of engagement. Inaccurate targeting means you’re paying twice: once for the click and once to correct the error.
Even if your CMP is rock solid, you depend on publishers to honor user signals, too. Many still treat privacy in broad strokes with blanket banners instead of a granular jurisdiction framework. If a publisher doesn’t parse GPC or fails to provide state-specific consent pop-ups, your bids could be pinged with invalid traffic. That chips away at your reach quality and skews campaign data.
Your tech stack might be ready for 2025's privacy challenges, but if your publishers aren't keeping up, you're still at risk. These three questions reveal whether your partners are helping or hurting your compliance efforts.
If any answer is “no,” your campaigns operate with faulty data, wasting budget on unreachable users while accumulating compliance risk.
To future-proof your 2025 campaigns, you need to treat compliance as infrastructure, not an afterthought.
Tool/FrameworkKey FeaturesCompliance FocusOneTrustMulti-state CMP, Google Consent Mode, analytics, APIsUS state laws, GPC, CCPA/CPRADidomiState templates, GPP, granular consent, analyticsUS multi-state, sensitive dataIAB CCPA FrameworkStandardized opt-out, “Do Not Sell” link, ad tech signalsCalifornia (CCPA/CPRA)OsanoGPC detection, auto opt-out, location-based consentUniversal opt-out, CCPA/CPRATrustArcGPC recognition, automated cookie managementUS state laws, GPCIAB TCFGranular consent, vendor transparency, updated for USEvolving for the U.S., GDPRKetchNo-code CMP, custom banners, smart tag, data mappingU.S. multi-state, brand-focused
Privacy compliance in 2025 isn't about checking boxes, it's about unlocking competitive advantage. When you transform consent management from a legal requirement into a strategic asset, you achieve what outdated campaigns can't: precision spending, clear attribution, and future-proof positioning against evolving regulations.
To get your performance marketing to the next level, where every choice compounds into better results, you need to implement state-aware CMP configurations, enforce real-time consent propagation, and audit media partners with equal rigor. Build this infrastructure now, or watch competitors turn your hesitation into their advantage.
