There is a new kid in town: Server-Side GTM - What is it
all about? Should you use it? Can you use it? Everything you need to know coming up….
Hey there MeasureGeeks, Julian here, back with another video.
Today we’re going to talk about a hot topic in Analytics deployment, it’s Server - Side Tracking.
Since Google just announced their GTM server-side tagging I thought it’s a good idea to catch
everyone up on this new feature and how useful it will be for your tracking deployment.
But before we get started, If you are new here, I’d love for you to subscribe. We make videos on
Tracking data and analytics every week - so if you are a professional Marketer wanting to up
your game with data, then hit that subscribe button and stay up to date with what we do
Now with that out of the way… let’s dive into today's video!
So what is Server-Side Tracking all about?
Well to understand Server-Side tracking we need to first need to understand client-side tracking.
You see, previously we would go to a website by entering the url into the browser. What
happens in the background is that the browser connects to a server on the internet and then
we receive a document back that contains HTML CSS and JavaScript, which makes up our website.
Now on all of these files that get downloaded, we also have our tracking codes.
These get executed on our browser and then send data, like the time or which page you are on,
back to the mother-server, which is Google Analytics or for example Facebook Ads. So,
there is a direct connection between your browser, and this is the client
and your tracking tools . And this is called traditional Client-Side tracking.
With Server-Side Tracking, we don’t have that connection.
We actually build our own tracking server-which then connects directly to our different tools.
But how does the tracking data get to the server? Well, we either send it still there from the
client side or we could also send it directly from the website-server or your application
to your Tracking server. From there, it then gets distributed to your tools.
The big advantage here is that we potentially have to not send the same data over and over
again to these different tracking tools, but can simply send that data over once to our
tracking server and from there it gets distributed to our different tool.
That’s server-side tracking in a nutshell.
It’s important to notice that this is really not a new concept. Tools like Segment or
Tealium have had this approach for years. And we were actually able to send in data
to Google Analytics from the Server-Side via the Measurement Protocol as well.
But now, what is this Server-Side GTM all about?
Well in Google Tag Manager you can now choose to create your own server
in the Google Cloud to play the role of the Tracking server. Your Data can be sent to
that server and then it gets picked up and you can configure your triggers to fire any
kind of tags and forward that data on to your tools like Google Analytics. Pretty neat right?
There’s a catch though. First of all, you need to set it all up. I have an extended tutorial
linked up down below which you can check out. And although the setup is not really too hard,
it takes a while to get used to the new paradigm that this new
Server-Side tracking technology brings with it.
So data gets actually sent from your Browser to your GTM Server-Side instance, and there it needs
to be claimed by something called GTM Clients. These then parse the data and you can trigger
tags just like in your normal GTM. So far so good, but the problem right now at least is that at the
moment there are not many templates out there for the clients of Server-Side GTM and also not many
tags out there. So even if you wanted to, it’s really hard to migrate your data from Client-Side
to Server-Side right now. I’m sure that’s going to change in no time, with the awesome GTM community
that always produces these new templates. But we just have to wait and see for that one.
The second thing you need to be aware of is - Just like you are building your website on a web server
on the internet, you’re building here a tracking server. And this actually is not for free.
Google gives you a free sandbox at the beginning to test out your tags and get it all configured.
But if you want to run this on a live website, you need to upgrade and that costs at least a
$100/month. But maybe we’ll see that coming down in cost because this is actually a dockerized
instance. You could take it over to another cloud platform and deploy it there. Maybe
there will be specialized vendors there in the future that will bring down the price.
Allright, now that you have this all set up and understand what it’s doing,
what are maybe some use cases why you would prefer using Server-Side GTM right now?
Well, the big factor here is you have more control, since you are sending data to your
own server. And once the data arrives there, you can really do whatever you want with it.
You can change it around, manipulate it, and add data or you could also just ignore it.
So for example you could make sure that Personal Identifiable Information is being stripped out of
the request before you send it on. Or you could send certain data request only to one specific
tool. Or you could also add data, like an API key that you want to keep secret from the client.
There are many more such examples of creative uses of Google Tag Manager Server-Side tracking,
but the point being here, you have much more centralized control on how to deal
with the data before it then goes on to your tracking vendors.
On the client side with this approach, things would also change, because now you will only
be sending one tracking point over to your Server-Side GTM and from there the client
can distribute it to all of these different tools. That obviously would then save resources,
data and could improve site speed
Another advantage on the client side on this one request, is that you wouldn’t be sending
your data over to let’s say google-analytics.com, but to your own domain like data.yourwebsite.com
and ad blockers actually use that url oftentimes. They can recognize google-analytics.com,
but are less likely to notice when you send data to your own tracking domain. Therefore,
it could be a good way, at least for right now to circumvent ad blockers and get more data into your
system. That, of course, could change at any point in time, when the ad blockers catch up and find
out we are all using this technique and then they will shut probably down this loophole as well.
But in the same way, we could also look at ITP. So the Intelligent Tracking Prevention by the
Apple and Safari browsers. The restrictions that were introduced there are the cookie expiration
date are set differently depending on how you set your cookies. So cookies would only be valid in
the Safari browsers for 1 to 7 days depending on how you set them. But with Server-Side tracking,
you can actually send something called an HTTP cookie, which currently doesn’t fall
under these restrictions, thus getting around the ITP at least partially. Again, of course,
this could change at any point in time once the webkit browsers change their approach as well.
So maybe that sounds already like some pretty compelling use cases to you
that you want to implement. So should you start using GTM Server-Side right now?
Well… I’d say, hold your horses there for a bit longer.
While this is really a cool new feature set of GTM,
it’s definitely not yet in primetime, at least for now, it comes with some drawbacks.
Don’t forget the cost. You will need to pay money for this. If you are planning on using
Server-Side GTM for your or your client’s website, you need to set this up on a server
and pay for it on a monthly basis. You should also not underestimate the cost that come with
potentially migration of your tracking codes onto the Server-Side instance.
You would need to re-implement and then test this all again.
But then you also need to remember, this is still in Beta. There are not many templates
inside of GTM Server-Side yet, so unless you are a developer wanting to write your own templates,
you can’t really migrate everything over from your client side over to the Server-Side quite yet.
But okay, if that doesn’t hold you back and you are one of the enthusiasts who really
wants to tinker with this tech, you can get started right now. It’s pretty easy to set up,
I’ll have a link to a tutorial down below.
Allright, overall, I'm super excited about GTM Server-Side tracking and what it will let us do
in the future. It might not be entirely there yet, but just for us, there are already a lot
of brain-teasers. Perhaps we could change our tracking around and what we could do
and all the different possibilities that are going around in my head right now.
But what do you think? Will Server-Side tracking solve your tracking problems at the moment?
Or will you actually try it out? Or will you stick
to your Client-Side implementations and not really care about it for now.
Let me know in the comments down below, I’d love to hear from you.
And as always, if you found this video helpful then smash that like button and also subscribe to
our channel right over there because we’ll bring you new videos just like this one every week.
And for now, my name is Julian. Till next time.