TikTok Pixel and cookie consent: how to hold it until the visitor agrees

The TikTok Pixel sets cookies on your own domain as soon as its base code runs. TikTok's help center says it requires advertisers to provide notices and obtain consent as applicable law requires, and that when a person declines, your website must stop the pixel setting and using cookies.

This guide covers the browser pixel: what it stores, what TikTok asks you to do, how to hold it until the visitor chooses, and how to check your site. Server-side events through the TikTok Events API are covered in a separate guide.

What the TikTok Pixel stores

TikTok lists these cookies for the pixel. Each lasts 13 months from last use.

• _ttp: first-party on your domain, and third-party on .tiktok.com.
• ttcsid and ttcsid_<pixel code>: first-party on your domain.
• ttclid: first-party on your domain.
• _pangle: third-party, on analytics.pangle-ads.com.

What TikTok asks advertisers to do

TikTok's guide to cookies with the pixel gives three tools to disable cookies when a person declines consent: a tag manager, a third-party consent management platform, or TikTok's pixel consent mode. It also says to use a tag manager or consent management platform to control the firing of the pixel base code.

Separately, Events Manager lets you turn first-party cookie usage off in the pixel settings. TikTok notes this will not maximise the pixel's matching and attribution, and it is a site-wide setting, not a choice made by the visitor.

Three ways to hold the pixel

• Do not load the base code until the visitor accepts marketing. In Google Tag Manager, fire the TikTok tag on a consent trigger instead of All Pages.
• Use TikTok's pixel consent mode. The base code loads, but the pixel waits for the visitor's choice before it sends events.
• Let your consent banner block the pixel script. A banner with script blocking holds the request to analytics.tiktok.com until the visitor accepts marketing.

Check your site in five minutes

Your browser's developer tools show what the pixel does before anyone clicks the banner.

• Open your site in a private window and do not touch the banner.
• Open the developer tools, then Application (Storage in Firefox) and Cookies. Look for _ttp, ttcsid and ttclid on your domain.
• In the Network tab, filter on tiktok and reload. Look for requests to analytics.tiktok.com.
• Choose Reject all, reload, and check that no new TikTok cookies or events appear.
• Open a new private window, choose Accept all, and check that the pixel now runs.

Or let a real browser check for you: the free website scan lists the trackers that load before consent.

If you use Arqam360

The Arqam360 banner uses TikTok's pixel consent mode on its own: from the moment its script runs it tells the pixel to hold its events, then grants or revokes them with the visitor's Marketing choice. Nothing needs to be set. For it to act first, put the banner script above the TikTok Pixel code in the page head. If you limit the banner to certain regions, it leaves the pixel alone for visitors outside them.

To stop the pixel script loading at all until consent, also turn on Enforce Script Blocking in the banner settings. TikTok's pixel is then held under Marketing.

Sending events from your server too: TikTok Events API with consent.

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