Written for Cookie Rocks 2.11.2, checked on 7 November 2026.
This guide is for sites that show videos or maps. A YouTube video, a Vimeo video or a Google map sets cookies as soon as it loads, so it must wait for the visitor’s consent.
You need: Cookie Rocks Audit (free) to see what loads too early. Cookie Rocks Pro to hold videos and maps until the visitor consents.
See what loads before the choice
- Open Cookie Rocks, then Cookies, and click Scan my pages. The scan opens up to 30 of your pages, including pages with videos, maps or forms.
- In the table, find YouTube, Vimeo or Google Maps. Read the columns Before the visitor chooses and In order?.
- Not blocked with No means the video or map loads before the visitor chooses. Its provider receives the visitor’s address, and may set cookies.
- With the Audit alone, look in the settings of your cookie plugin for an option that blocks videos and maps until consent. Turn it on, then scan again.
If you see… “YouTube loads before the visitor chooses: nothing holds it back yet, and its provider receives the visitor’s IP address.” on the Overview page, or the same sentence with Google Maps: this is the same finding. Click See the details to open the table.
Hold them with Cookie Rocks Pro
What visitors see in place of the content
The message is plain and neutral, the same on every site: a light grey block, dark text and a dark button with white text, in the system font of the device. It does not take the accent colour of your banner or the style of your theme’s buttons, so it never looks like part of your design.
- The text: “This content comes from YouTube. Loading it lets YouTube set cookies on your device.”, with the name of each service. The button says what loads, for example Load the video, Load the map, Load the post, Load the player or Load the content.
- The language: the message is translated and follows the language of the page, and its direction for Arabic and Hebrew.
- The size: the message takes the exact size of the content it replaces. Nothing moves on the page.
- After the click: only this provider loads. The visitor’s other choices do not change.
Pictures of videos
YouTube, Vimeo and Dailymotion videos show their picture under the message, on a dark band with a white button. Your server copies each picture once, in the background, into the cookie-rocks folder of your uploads, and copies it again after 30 days. The visitor’s browser never contacts the video service before they agree.
Until the picture is copied, for example on the first visit after you add a video, or for a private video, the light grey block is shown instead.
Videos in your content
Since Cookie Rocks Pro 2.9.11, a click on Load the video allows this one tool, such as YouTube, without the whole marketing category. The video starts at once, without reloading the page.
Background videos
A video set as the background of a section, often the hero at the top of a page, is decoration. It gets no message and no button.
- Before the choice: the video is held, silently. The section shows the fallback image set in your page builder (Background Fallback in Elementor), or a picture of the video when one is available, otherwise its background colour.
- After consent: the video starts in the background, muted and looping, without reloading the page.
- After a refusal: the visitor never sees it, only the fallback image.
Tip. For a hero, upload the video to your own site (MP4 or WebM) rather than to YouTube or Vimeo. No outside service is contacted, so there is nothing to hold: the video plays for everyone, at once, and loads faster. In every case, set a fallback image: it is what visitors who refuse will see.
Where the law asks for notice or an opt-out
In countries and states where the law asks for notice or an opt-out rather than prior consent, such as California or Switzerland, the categories are on until the visitor refuses: videos and maps load without waiting. This applies when your site targets only such places, or, with Rules by country on, to visitors from there. A site based in a country that asks for consent first makes every visitor wait.
Forms protected by reCAPTCHA
Above a form protected by Google reCAPTCHA, a short notice says: “This form uses Google reCAPTCHA to stop spam. Please allow it to send your message.”, with an Allow reCAPTCHA button. What the visitor has typed stays in the form.
Tip. The same works for other known content: social posts, audio players, calendars, forms and comment sections. Their button names what loads, such as Load the post, Load the calendar, Load the form or Load the comments. Content that a script builds in the page works the same way: Wistia and Vidyard videos, Typeform and HubSpot forms, Disqus comments. In their place, visitors see the message and the button instead of an empty space. The message looks the same on every site: see above. On a site for children, see Set up a site aimed at children.
More detail: Cookies and Consent. The video widget of Elementor is held too: see Elementor.
Next step: Set up Google Consent Mode