The 7 Benefits of Server Side Tagging for More Conversions

Server Side Tracking is an important evolution in online data tracking. The benefits are not only measuring more conversions, but it also gives more control and flexibility over your data structure. Yet for many companies and agencies, the increase in measurability is the main reason for switching from client side, to Server Side Tagging.

On average, this switch yields 10-30% more data and recorded conversions (purchases/leads). There are several factors that cause you to register more conversions, both direct and indirect. In addition to registering more conversions, Server Side Tagging also creates additional new conversions in many cases. In this blog, we explain how Server Side Tagging ensures more conversion registrations and additional new conversions.

To explain this properly, we make the following distinction: The ways in which SST (in GTM) directly increases conversions and the ways in which it does so indirectly.

TAGGRS offers the ability to monitor the effect itself. However, this only allows you to monitor the direct effect on measurability. In this blog, we describe the full effect on your marketing campaigns.

1: The direct effect

By direct effect, we mean the way Server Side Tagging in Google Tag Manager (using TAGGRS software) provides a direct increase in measurability.

1.1 Ad blockers and tracking prevention

Server Side Tracking provides a direct increase in measurable data. This increase results from two things:

• You bypass ad blockers that block e.g. GA4, META and Google ads cookies
• You bypass the tracking prevention of browsers (Safari, Firefox, Edge, Brave)

Iphone users have the ability to indicate that they want to disable tracking. This ensures (with client side tagging) that third pary cookies are completely blocked. As a result, you can no longer record conversions with this Internet user.

With Server Side Tracking from TAGGRS, tracking cannot be blocked and you also place first-party cookies (If you configure TAGGRS on your own subdomain).

The combination of bypassing ad blockers and tracking prevention provides an immediate 5- 30% increase in measured pageviews and conversions. The differences per website can be very large, depending on the user.

1.2 Enhanced tracking script

There are many different types of ad blockers. Some are more advanced than others. There are ad blockers that block Google Tag Manager completely. These recognize Google Tag Manager's tracking script. In this case, both client side and Server Side Tagging are blocked and you have no tracking.

TAGGRS has developed a solutions for this: The enhanced tracking script. This tool is available to all TAGGRS customers. The tool provides a modification to the standard tracking script. This adaptation ensures that Ad blockers do not recognize the code as GTM.

From our research, this appears to provide a 1-2% increase in measurability. This increase applies to both client side and server side, so your client side tags will also register more data. However, using the enhanced tracking script is only possible in combination with GTM Server Side Tagging with TAGGRS.

So implementing the enhanced tracking script does not increase the difference between client side tagging and Server Side Tagging. It causes both to increase in quantity. Therefore, in the analytics tool, you will see little to no increase in the difference (Client vs. Server side).

We try to make it as easy as possible for customers, so we created a sample implementation and a free GTM Copy Paste extension for easy copying and pasting of GTM elements.

2: The indirect effect

Most marketers and developers will be particularly familiar with the above benefits of Server Side Tagging. However, there are also other benefits that indirectly cause you to record and generate more conversions. Here are the most important benefits.

2.1: The data quality

Server Side Tagging gives much more control over your data. You are in the lead and can enrich or anonymize the data at any time.

Previously, Google and META had free rein and could build profiles per Internet user through cross site tracking. This allowed them to register interests and buying signals very accurately. Advertisers in turn eagerly took advantage of that. From a privacy perspective, this is no longer desirable. Cross site tracking and third party cookies are being increasingly reduced. This ensures that advertising platforms register less and less (user) data. The quality of targeting options is therefore flying backwards. Just try targeting on interests in META!

To still understand who your customers are, Google and META themselves ask you to send user data along with conversions. For example, Google calls this Enhanced Conversions. Google indicates that this yields 3-5% extra conversions in your campaigns.

Server Side Tagging is great for enriching your data so you can send it along to ad platforms. The server container operates as an HTTP API endpoint. This ensures that you can send data from all kinds of sources to Google Tag Manager. Think for example of your CRM data. This way you can get additional user data into GTM and send it to the ad platforms. Result: More conversions in your campaigns.

2.2 Website speed

With client side tagging, the various scripts are loaded into the user's browser. Thus, this has an impact on the loading speed of the website. The more tracking, the more impact on the loading speed. Of course you don't want this, because loading speed affects the conversion rate and is an important ranking factor for SEO.

With Server Side Tagging, the scripts are loaded into the server, so this does not affect the loading speed of the website. So the complete transition from client to server side, provides an improvement in load time. How much this improvement will be is hard to say. This is different for each website.

2.3 Cookie extension

This is an important, underexplored benefit of Server Side Tagging. Earlier in this blog, we described the rise of tracking prevention. The first version of this was launched in 2017. This prevented ad platforms from cross-site tracking. In 2019, a restriction was added: The lifetime of third-party cookies was limited from 30 to max 7 days. After that, the cookie is automatically deleted.

If the conversion of the person who clicked on the ad does not occur within 1 or 7 days, it is not attributed to the campaign. For example, consider a major purchase like a car. If someone comes across a car in an online campaign, clicks and is interested, but does not convert until two weeks later, the conversion is not attributed to the ad campaign. A shame, because this was the trigger.

Little known fact: When you include parameters in the URL, for example UTM tags, the cookie life is limited to 1 day in Firefox and Safari!

TAGGRS Cookie Recovery allows you to extend the lifetime of cookies in browsers with tracking prevention. This ensures that you can attribute all conversions generated from the campaign to the correct source.

2.4 Retargeting

Following on from the previous point, we would also like to highlight the effect on retargeting. In general, these are high-yield campaigns. The target audience consists of people who are already familiar with your company and product.

By shortening the lifespan of cookies or blocking tracking completely, retargeting is becoming increasingly difficult. As a result, you can generate fewer conversions from users who may be interested.

With Server Side Tracking, you bypass tracking prevention and can extend the life of cookies. This has a big impact on the effectiveness of your retargeting campaigns.

Other benefits

The above list cover the main benefits of Server Side Tagging. In particular, these deal with the benefits of additional data. There are a number of other benefits that we want to mention briefly in this blog anyway for a complete picture.

AVG proof

With Server Side Tagging via TAGGRS, you collect the data. In addition, you can modify and anonymize it before sharing it with parties such as Google. So you are fully in control of your own data. This is much more in line with the essence of the AVG.

Safety

Because you have control and access to your own data, you can also better shield it from potential misuse. The data is collected in your own server, so it no longer goes through the user's devices. This makes it much better shielded.

By moving data processing from the user devices to the server, transactions can be conducted safely and with appropriate security credentials without exposing sensitive information.

A well-known problem with Google Analytics, for example, is spam due to the so-called Measurement Protocol. Hackers send fake website hits via automated HTTP requests. To prevent this, you can use Server Side Tagging to set up a special "dimension" in your server. When you send this information to Google Analytics, you can create a filter that only allows traffic that matches this dimension. This effectively blocks spam.

Cookie banner configuration

In line with the AVG, the use of a cookie banner on your website is mandatory. Based on the consent given by website users, tags should/should not be fired in GTM. By applying Server Side Tagging in GTM, you can more easily adapt your setup to the cookie banner consent on your website.

In conclusion

This blog has discussed the benefits (both direct and indirect) of implementing Server Side Tagging. The goal of TAGGRS is to make these benefits available to as many marketers and developers as possible. Should you, like us, get tremendously excited about this, start TAGGRS for free. Would you first like to know more about the benefits for your situation? Then send us a message!

Curious about the complete setup? Then check out our Ultimate Server Side Tracking Checklist.

See you on the server side!