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This page is a factual description of the pixel’s behavior. It is not legal advice, and it makes no recommendation about what your policies, notices, or agreements should say. Those are decisions for your own counsel.
The way Profound Pixel handles consent depends on whether your website uses a consent management platform (CMP). On sites with a CMP, the pixel reads the consent signal the CMP emits. On sites without one, it follows the consent posture set in your snippet. Either way, the pixel doesn’t ask your visitors for consent and adds no cookie banner of its own to your site. Whatever its source, the consent signal the pixel reads consists of the following three permissions: These permissions are independent, and none of them implies another. For example, consent to cookie storage alone never allows ad-platform sharing or sending out events.

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Sites with CMP

If your site uses a CMP, it handles consent for you: it emits the consent signal that Profound Pixel detects and follows. The recognized standards and vendors include:

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If your CMP isn’t detected

If your CMP isn’t recognized, or if you built your own consent banner, you’ll need to map your consent categories to the permissions Profound Pixel can read. Call pfq('consent', …) from your CMP’s change handler, and pass it the permissions map:
Permissions you leave out keep their default values: denied in the EU/UK, or defined in your consent posture in other regions.

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Sites without CMP

If your site doesn’t use a CMP, you have to explicitly set your consent posture when you initialize your Profound Pixel. The options are:
  • Opt-in (default): all three consent permissions start denied until a consent signal grants them. This is the best setting for EU/UK traffic.
  • Opt-out: the permissions start granted until a signal denies them, with Global Privacy Control honored. This is the usual setting for US-based traffic. Set it with pfq("init", "<YOUR_PIXEL_ID>", { posture: "opt-out" }). Learn more in the pixel installation guide.

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Timezone check

When reading the consent signal, the pixel also checks the browser’s timezone. A visitor who appears to be in a European timezone is treated as opt-in even under the opt-out posture. Profound applies this check to comply with European data protection regulations. The check covers more than the EU region: any Europe/* timezone counts, including cities outside the EU, such as Istanbul, Belgrade, and Kyiv, plus several Atlantic islands. If your pixel is scoped to a single non-EU region, or your local data protection regulations otherwise allow the opt-out posture, you can disable the timezone check by adding detectRegion: false to the pfq('init', ...) call in your install snippet:
Always review your local data protection laws before disabling the timezone check.
When a visitor withdraws consent, the changes take effect immediately: the pixel deletes its cookies and clears its memory. The visitor also gets a new random visitor ID, so granting consent again later can’t restore the old ID.

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Cookies

Profound Pixel writes the following cookies into the site visitor’s browser storage:
Some browsers cap the lifetime of script-written cookies below the set lifetime values. For example, Safari’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention shortens both to roughly 7 days.
Both cookies are first-party and marked SameSite=Lax and Secure. Only the pixel script in the browser writes them, and only after your consent signal allows storage. Profound’s servers set no cookies at all.

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Data collection

Profound Pixel collects the following data: Notes:
  • Whether the IP address is discarded or stored depends on the country Profound’s servers detect for the request. The detection is reliable in practice, but it isn’t guaranteed for any individual request. If the detection fails, the country is recorded as empty, and the IP address is stored.
  • Collected data is processed in the United States.
  • Conversion data is not forwarded to OpenAI, Google, or any other ad platform today. If that ever changes, Profound will inform you before it is switched on.

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Optional: forwarding conversions to OpenAI

This capability is still in development and subject to change.
When you run ads with OpenAI, OpenAI normally learns about your conversions through its own pixel or its Conversions API. Profound can handle this for you: because Profound Pixel uses the same event names as OpenAI, Profound can pass your conversions on to OpenAI’s Conversions API from its own servers, matched to the ad through OpenAI’s click ID. For you, this would mean:
  • OpenAI receives the conversions it needs to credit your ads and adjust bidding.
  • Profound Pixel stays the only tag on your site: you don’t install OpenAI’s pixel, and you keep the full first-party record with Profound.
  • Visitors stay in control: the forwarding is governed by the Ad-platform sharing permission, which stays denied until consent allows it.
If this is an option you would like to explore, speak to your Profound team. Your Profound contact can supply the standard data-processing agreement and answer questions from your privacy team before Profound Pixel goes live on your site. Profound also provides a separate legal onboarding document covering what to update in your privacy policy and cookie policy.