Guide

How To Create Server Side Container For GTM

In this guide you will learn how to create your new server side container in Google Tag Manager and connect to your Google Cloud account.

Here are the steps you will complete:

1. Create New Container in GTM
2. Provision Your Server
3. Connect Billing Account
4. (optional) Create Billing Account
5. Add Billing Information
6. Tagging Server Setup Complete

The following goes through every step required to:

1. Create your server side container inside of Google Tag Manager 
2. Connect to your Google Cloud App Engine

Before getting started you will want to have the following:

1. Admin access to your Google Cloud account (if you have one)
2. A verified domain that your email has been added to. Typically this is your primary website URL that is verified in Google Search Console. 

Remember – as we covered in the overview on server side tag management with GTM, you get data to your server side container by sending requests to a unique URL. And we want that unique URL to be a subdomain of your primary website URL so your server side tagging is done in 1st party context. 

Step 1: Create New Container

Inside of Google Tag Manager go to Admin > Create New Container > Select Server Side Container Type:

If you are on an Elevar server side plan then be sure to add [email protected] to this container with “Publish” permissions inside Admin > User Management. 

Google will set all users to Read Only by default after you create this container.

Step 2: Provision Your Server

Your next step is to have Google provision your new server. This is done automatically for you! Just click “Automatically provision tagging server” to continue.

Step 3: Connect Billing Account

If you already have a billing account with Google Cloud then you can select your billing account to continue. 

Otherwise you will need to create a new billing account which I’ll go through in the next few steps. 

Step 4: Create Billing Account Details

This is the screen you’ll land on to create your basic account details. 

Step 5: Add Billing Information

Next you’ll need to add your billing details including a credit card.

Step 6: Tagging Server Setup Complete

Once you’ve added your billing information and continued then Google will begin to provision your server. 

If it’s successful then you’ll be prompted with this screen inside of Google Tag Manager:

If you have an error like this below then simply retry by clicking the create server button again. 

That’s it! You’ve successfully created your new server side container.

Next up – connect your own unique subdomain URL to your server side container.