Hello @MDurkin, happy Friday!
The pixel is expected to still load even if the user hasn’t accepted cookies, but it will only record anonymous page view data and nothing about the user. Without cookies we still want to be able to record that a page view happened, we just can’t record who viewed the page. If you were to prevent it from firing until cookies were accepted your traffic analytics would be completely incorrect.
We don’t have documentation on the pixel specifically but this article lists all of the cookies we use. Only the ones marked “strictly necessary” should fire before consent is given and everything else should require consent.
I hope this information helps.
Pam