The consent message sets the stage for a fast, informed decision. It introduces the three Data Access Levels, explains what changes when a visitor selects one, and lets the visitor set how long the choice should last.

Access Levels at a glance

The banner presents three equal choices—Private, Balanced, and Personalized—so visitors can accept none, some, or all non-essential purposes without extra screens or imbalance between “accept” and “reject.”

• Private — the strict, privacy-first choice; equivalent to “reject all” non-essential purposes.
• Balanced — a middle option that allows optimization and/or personalization, comparable to enabling “functional/analytics”-type purposes.
• Personalized — the full-feature choice; equivalent to “accept all.”

The banner on the New engine (v2), with its default design and three consent choices. On New, clicking a level saves the choice; there is no separate Save button. Sites on the Classic engine (v1) show the same choices in a different layout.

What each choice enables

Each choice enables a fixed set of purposes:

• Private enables Basic Operations only.
• Balanced enables Basic Operations plus Content Personalization and Site Optimization.
• Personalized enables all purpose categories, including Ad Personalization.

The levels themselves are fixed. What you control is which purpose category each provider belongs to (on the Autoblocking page; changing a provider’s category needs the Professional plan, and some built-in providers are locked), so each Level runs the services that match your policy.

Duration selector (how long consent lasts)

The message includes a Duration control. You choose which durations to offer (e.g., 1/3/6 months, 1–2 years). Visitors can change the duration without changing the selected Level. The choice writes to the consent cookie for the period you allow.

Default Consent Level (before any action)

GDPR-style prior consent requires non-essential purposes to start off. Cookie Compliance therefore treats Private as the compliant default (preselected on the Classic engine; the New engine preselects nothing). If your policy permits, you can set Balanced or Personalized as the default instead. The banner records the final Level when the visitor saves a choice based on your behavior settings.

Preferences and live Level updates

When a visitor opens Preferences and toggles individual purposes, the banner recalculates the Level:

• Enabling Ad Personalization upgrades to Personalized.
• Disabling non-essential purposes drops the Level (e.g., back to Balanced or Private).
  This keeps the single-screen choice and the detailed preferences in sync.

Message fields you edit (where each line shows)

On Configuration → Content, you edit the text that appears in the banner:

• Heading – a short, direct title for the decision.
• Message – 1–3 concise lines that explain why you ask and what each Level implies.
• Buttons – labels for the buttons and the link to Preferences. The Save button label (e.g., “Save preferences”) is Classic engine only: the New engine has no Save button (each choice saves on click), so that field is not shown for New-engine sites.
• Unblock copy – text shown on blocked embeds with a clear action to enable them after consent.

What changes after a selection (behind the scenes)

Once the banner records a choice, Cookie Compliance enforces it: non-essential scripts and iframes remain paused until consent exists, and only the services allowed by the chosen Level run afterward.