Marketing in 2024 operates within a technical and regulatory framework that has changed faster than the habits of most teams. Since March 6, 2024, Google has mandated Consent Mode v2 for any advertiser targeting the European Economic Area via Google Ads or Google Analytics 4.
Without this compliance, a significant portion of personalized advertising and conversion measurement ceases to function. This alone reshuffles priorities: marketing strategy becomes primarily a data infrastructure issue.
Consent Mode v2 and CNIL Compliance: The Technical Foundation That Conditions Everything Else
The majority of articles on marketing trends for 2024 discuss artificial intelligence and video formats. Few address the regulatory wall that acquisition and measurement teams are concretely facing. Consent Mode v2 is not a cosmetic adjustment of the cookie banner. It is a protocol that changes how Google tags behave based on user choice.
In France, this system must align with the article 82 of the Data Protection Act, which transposes the ePrivacy directive and governs the placement of trackers. The CNIL has announced a wave of checks starting in mid-2026 targeting the relationship between cookie banners, CMP (consent management platform), and signals sent to Google. For companies that have not yet audited their measurement stack, the risk is no longer theoretical.
Resources that address marketing on Le Bilan detail these compliance issues applied to current digital strategies. Any paid acquisition strategy now relies on the quality of the technical implementation of consent, not just on the media budget.
Analytics Without Cookies: Measuring Audience Without Prior Consent
The CNIL accepts that an audience measurement tool may be exempt from consent if several strict conditions are met. The data must only be used to measure the audience on behalf of the site publisher. No data can be cross-referenced with other files or transmitted to third parties.
This framework opens a concrete field for marketers: testing pages, messages, or journeys without depending on the cookie banner acceptance rate. On some French sites, the refusal rate for trackers far exceeds one-third of visitors. Losing this portion of the audience in measurement skews any performance analysis.
The tools exempted by the CNIL (the list is public and regularly updated) allow for a complete view of traffic on basic indicators. However, they do not replace the advanced segmentation or multi-touch attribution functions offered by consent-based solutions.
- An exempted tool covers traffic measurement, page views, direct traffic sources, without data cross-referencing.
- A/B testing on landing pages can rely on these exempted data to measure variations in bounce rates or time spent.
- The attribution of conversions to a specific advertising campaign remains dependent on user consent and Consent Mode v2.
Content Strategy in 2024: What Saturation Really Changes
The volume of content published daily on social media and blogs has reached a level where organic visibility no longer rewards consistency alone. Algorithms from platforms like Instagram, TikTok, or LinkedIn favor rapid engagement signals: viewing time, shares, comments in the first few minutes.
Publishing less but with a documented strategic intention yields better results than maintaining a rigid editorial calendar. This requires choosing a format per platform and concentrating production resources on that, rather than replicating the same message everywhere.
Short vertical videos remain the format most promoted by social platform algorithms. Field feedback varies on this point when it comes to direct conversion: the format generates visibility and awareness, but the link between a viral video and measurable purchase remains difficult to establish for most companies without an integrated purchasing journey on the platform.
The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Content Production
Generative AI has reduced the cost of producing a first draft of text or image to almost zero. The direct consequence: value shifts towards verification, editorial angle, and distribution. AI-generated content without expert proofreading, proprietary data, or an identifiable viewpoint gets lost in the mass.
Brands leveraging AI in 2024 use it to accelerate intermediate tasks (data summaries, title variations, format adaptations) rather than to replace strategic thinking. Differentiation comes from framing, not from production speed.
DMA and DSA: Two European Regulations Redefining Marketing Distribution
The Digital Markets Act (DMA) and the Digital Services Act (DSA) have come into effect and are changing the rules of the game for large platforms designated as “gatekeepers.” For marketers, the concrete effects are still being rolled out, but several changes are already visible.
- Search results on Google must leave more room for comparators and third-party sites, altering local SEO and e-commerce strategies.
- Advertising platforms are required to be more transparent about targeting criteria and bidding, providing advertisers with a better understanding of their actual costs.
- Advertising targeting based on sensitive categories is restricted, pushing strategies towards contextual rather than behavioral approaches.
The available data does not yet allow for measuring the impact of the DMA on acquisition costs at the level of the French market. Initial feedback from advertisers indicates adjustments in budget allocation between search, social, and retail media, without a uniform trend.
Marketing in 2024 plays out on two simultaneous fronts: the technical mastery of compliance (consent, analytics, DMA) and the ability to produce content that justifies attention in a saturated environment. Teams that treat these two dimensions as a single issue have a structural advantage over those that continue to plan their campaigns without integrating regulatory constraints into their daily workflow.