If server-side tracking is so great why doesn’t every brand use it for all tracking? Learn more about the limitations […]
Brad Redding is the Founder & CEO of Elevar. Specializing in analytics, tracking, GTM, and conversion optimization.
If server-side tracking is so great why doesn’t every brand use it for all tracking? Learn more about the limitations to server-side tracking in this lesson.
The main reason that a brand does not move all tracking server-side is because:
Yet is the key word here.
Eventually every marketing channel will have a server-side API to accept data — like Facebook’s Conversion API.
You can listen to an interview with Elevar’s VP of Engineering in this related blogpost for full details on this client-side vs server-side tracking competition.
Here are a few of the special callouts from this.
Adapting to the server-side API tracking mechanism distorts their entire API ecosystem because they not only have to manage their client-side pixels, but also have to manage an extremely high volume of data for event hits that get sent via API.
Many channels simply can’t handle the type of integration needed to manage this.
So, they retain the already familiar system of implementation – the client-side pixel via onsite Javascript.
The primary reasons channels are not moving quickly to adapt are:
If you’ve read each lesson in this server-side course you’ve likely picked up on this fact:
Client-side tracking via onsite Javascript/pixels can pick up data from the user’s browser without the user — or you, the brand — knowing exactly what data is being fetched and sent back to the marketing channel.
You may have even received emails from affiliate vendors or other marketing channels that you need to update your tracking integration to be “ITP Compliant” or so you are collecting it in “1st party context to get around blockers”.
They don’t really outline what exactly they are collecting other than providing instructions like:
And this data is used to help the channel attribute activity to conversions ultimately so you can view reporting inside their platform.
So taking a cue from the previous section on why everything doesn’t so server-side, it’s the reality that channels may have to rebuild how they attribute performance with a more limited dataset.
There are industry movements forcing change though:
Here’s a hypothetical example:
Commission Junction uses:
All to help CJ match an affiliate click to a conversion. They may do something like:
But if in a server-side integration CJ is only receiving:
Then their fallback will be limited.
Now — depending on how you are integrating server-side tracking will dictate what data you have access to.
For example if you are utilizing Elevar, we capture the data outlined above and can map to destinations if their server-side API can accept this.
Consent and cookie compliance has skyrocketed the past several years as brands scramble to be GDPR and/or CCPA compliant (among others).
When sending data server-side to a destination like Google Ads, and you are legally required to remain compliant (ex. Google Ads EU consent compliance requirement), then ensuring your server-side integrations are compliant is mandatory as well.
So if you are utilizing Elevar’s server-side tracking, you will need to ensure you configure your consent rules inside each destination:
