Server-side Tagging

The basics

Traditional browser tracking sends snippets of data to reporting or marketing platforms from a user's device as they go about interacting with your site or app. It can generally only happen in real time while the user is engaged.

In contrast, server-side tagging is a way to collect data about user behaviour and business activity outside of that “interaction window”. You can send data based on things that happen “in the cloud”, ie. from your back-end, customer database or payment system.

This opens up opportunities for collecting higher quality data more reliably as you're no longer limited to times when the user is online and active.

How it works

There are a few solutions available for server-side tagging but they generally work in the same way.

• First, you set up a tagging server—think of it like a web or email server which sends, receives and stores data in the cloud.
• Next, you update your site or app to send any tracking information to your analytics server (instead of Google Analytics, Google Ads, Meta and so on).
• From there, you configure your tagging server to send to third-parties only the key information they need.
• Finally, you can set-up any other systems such as your CRM, billing platform, mobile apps or partner sites to send data to your tagging server (such as recurring transactions).

With your tagging server all the data you collect can be consolidated and used to improve reporting, conversion measurement and audience creation.

A secondary benefit of server-side tagging is that you are not negatively impacted by browser-based ad blockers. These add-ons or browser features prevent any “hits” being sent from browsers back to marketing or analytics platforms. This is not a bad thing as typically these services are rather greedy in how much information they collect about the user.

With server-side tagging, you control entirely what information is sent to the platforms. As there is no browser involved, the hits (or other data) can't be blocked. You are collecting the data within the context of your customer relationship to a server that you own.

This means you have fine-grained control over what data you collect and send to third parties in accordance with your terms. Data can be sanitised to remove personally identifiable information (PII) before being shared with marketing platforms. You get excellent optimisation data but without having to expose anything your users would not want you to.

Browser (or client-side) tracking still remains an important part of your toolkit in a server-side tagging world. Anonymous users (sessions) that arrive at your site will be tagged with identifiers (cookies) that indicate how they arrived at the site and any initial actions they take. When those users eventually sign up or purchase, their anonymous profile can be linked with a real user ID. By linking the anonymous and real IDs, you have the opportunity to attribute the life-time value (LTV) of the customer to the initial source of traffic.

Hosting your browser tracking library on your own tagging server means that you can more reliably set the cookies required to tag anonymous users. With traditional browser tracking, these cookies are set with third-party “pixels”. Browser tracking protections increasingly make it harder for third parties to store cookies, reducing the ability of marketing platforms to identify and track your users.

With server-side tagging only you have the ability to identify and track your users. Third parties can no longer snoop on users (or be blocked from doing so by browser vendors). All data flows directly from the browser to your tagging server.

With a tagging server in place you can relay tracking information to as many services as you like without any impact on site performance. This is because only a single client-side tag (a browser pixel, your browser pixel) can send browser data to the tagging server. All further processing is done in the cloud and doesn't impact the user.

Traditionally, every single service that wanted to get data about the user's session would have to be loaded on the page (as a pixel), reducing site performance and exposing all information on the page to those third parties.

For clients just getting started with server-side tagging we recommend implementing Google's new Server-side Tag Manager hosted on Google Cloud.

A basic set-up with core marketing tags migrated server-side can typically be done from approximately $2,000 ex GST with ongoing costs of about $300 per month for high-traffic sites (billed directly by Google Cloud). A free option is available for lower traffic situations.

For other providers such as Segment or Tealium, costings can be provided upon request.