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.
