Most organizations not only know about Google Tag Manager (GTM) but have embraced it by deploying all their analytics and marketing tags via GTM. The flexibility that GTM has provided, and the speedy implementation of tags has been a game changer for more than a decade. What most Marketers and IT teams are not following is Server-side Google Tag Manager (sGTM), here’s why they should deploy it.
Server-side is exactly what it sounds like: Google scripts for client side GTM and Google Analytics (GA) can be served from your own domain, e.g., data.example.com, and all compatible analytics and tracking hits are sent to your server to then be forwarded to the appropriate endpoints, for example: analytics.google.com. Rather than these hits going to a third party, Like Google or Meta, they first go to your server and the appropriate cookies are set from your domain as HTTP cookies, not via client-side JavaScript. Well, that may seem like an extra layer of complexity, but it is a brilliant solution that leads to better privacy, attribution and user experience.
Privacy
Having scripts that power GA and GTM served from your own domain shield your users from a call to Google’s servers. (For the record Google’s support docs state that no IP information is stored in these processes.) There is no need to worry about exposing your users to this process. More importantly hits get sent to your servers before being sent to endpoints like GA, etc. This gives you the opportunity to shape the hit that is forwarded. For example, you can remove part or all the user’s IP address, User Agent strings, campaign information, or any other part of the hit – before – it’s sent to third party servers. These services like GA will never have access to information that you remove.
Attribution
Cookies are imperfect, fragile methods to track a user’s sessions on your site over time. Because of privacy initiatives by modern web browsers, you can count on GA (and any other) cookies set on the client-side by JavaScript to expire within 7 days. This is a terrible problem because one user can come back to your site via several sources once every 8 days and be counted each time as a new user with a different traffic source. Trying to decipher the path to purchase and all marketing touch points with client-side cookies is severely flawed. Currently server-side HTTP cookies do not have this limitation and will persist on the device as set, for example, 6 months for GA.
User Experience
Speed is the name of the game and loading scripts and pushing tracking from the user’s browser can result in a bogged down experience. By shifting to server side, multiple tags sent to different endpoints can be handled with a single push to your own server. This results in a better, faster front-end experience. According to a Google study, for every second delay in page load, conversion rates drop by 20%!
While it may seem overwhelming, a move to sGTM is a path to better privacy, data insights and conversion rates and a great part of your marketing plan for this year and beyond.
While it’s a great move for most organizations, it may not be the right one for you. We are happy to talk you through it to see if a move to sGTM makes sense for your team.
If you would like help with this or any feature of Google Tag Manger, Google Analytics. Looker Studio or Google Cloud and BigQuery we are happy to assist with all your measurement and BI needs. Reach out at 800-787-0497 or drop us a line at info@morevisibility.com.
