FAQ: How to set up #GA4 via GTM Server Side Tagging Browser-based tracking and cookies won’t last forever, and Server-side tracking is the future of tracking. The ever increasing tracking restrictions from web browsers and ad blockers have made client-side tracking unreliable. And it is only going to get worse in the future. These tracking restrictions create big data gaps on the conversion paths, making it very difficult to understand customers’ purchase journeys and advertise profitably. To make matters worse, Google announced a plan to end the support of third-party cookies in the near future. . . In the case of server-side tracking, you DO NOT fire third-party JavaScript code (also known as pixels) on your website. You do not set up third-party cookies on your users’ web browsers. You fire tracking and marketing pixels from your servers instead of on the users’ web browsers. So when you set up server-side tracking for Google Analytics, you no longer run Google Analytics on users’ web browsers. Instead, you run Google Analytics from your web server. Similarly, when you set up server-side tracking for Google ads, you no longer fire Google Ads tags on users’ web browsers. Instead, you fire Google Ads tags from your web server. . . The following are the key advantages of using server-side tracking: 1) You can implement API-based conversion tracking, which can track conversions much more accurately than traditional browser-based conversion tracking. 2) You can collect third-party data in the first-party context. 3) Through server-side tracking, you can fill the data gaps on your conversion paths created by client-side tracking. 4) When you use server-side tracking, you have more control over the data that you send to third-party vendors (like Google and Facebook). 5) Because you don’t fire marketing and analytics tags from users’ web browsers, server-side tracking can help improve your website speed. Learn more about the tracking setup >> optimizesmart.com/ga4-via-gtm-se…
