In order to explain the difference between CMP pageviews and web analytics pageviews, we have to distinguish between two different case scenarios:
The web-analytics tracking is synchronized with the CMP
In this first case, the notice is leveraging a 📰 tag management integration and, therefore, it is sending consent information (opt-in or opt-out) to the Tag Management System. This will mean that the triggering of the web-analytics tag is synchronized with consent.
Under these circumstances, only the pageviews from users with consent will be counted by the web analytics tool. The volume of web analytics pageviews should be close to the CMP opt-in pageviews (with consent). However, keep in mind that the CMP’s pageview count is sampled and the data detected by the bots may be different from that by the web analytics tools. These factors generate discrepancies between metrics.
The web-analytics tracking is not synchronized with the CMP
The second case occurs when the notice is not leveraging a tag management integration. Because of this, it is unlikely that the triggering of web-analytics tags will be synchronized with the user's consent.
In this case, the web analytics tool will collect all the pageviews without taking into account the user's consent. The total volume of the CMP pageviews should be pretty close to the web analytics pageviews tool. However, this practice is not compliant.
Also, some web analytics tools, such as AT Internet, offer consent exemption capabilities. In this case, the volume of pageviews will be similar to the total volume of pageviews in the CMP (pageviews with opt-ins plus pageviews without consent).
For more information about our integrations with tag management tools, read our documentation: