The Server-Side Tagging Communication Flow
From Site Interaction to an Event in My Marketing or Analytics Channel
The visuals below provide a simplified explanation of how events from site interactions reach marketing and analytics channels. This aims to clarify the steps involved in a Server-Side Tagging setup compared to Third-Party Pixels or Client-Side Tagging.
Third-Party Pixels can be placed on your site, granting third parties access to create their own events based on site interactions:
With Client-Side Tagging, you place a Google Tag Manager script on your site, allowing you to configure in a Google Tag Manager web container which events should be created based on site interactions. These events are sent directly to platforms from the web container, via the user’s browser:
With Server-Side Tagging, events are still created in a Google Tag Manager web container but are sent to a server linked to your primary domain. A Google Tag Manager server container then validates the events received on the server and forwards them to the appropriate platforms.
Your marketing and analytics channels receive a variety of events from you, but how do they process these so results appear in your campaign overview and reports populate in Google Analytics? This is achieved by attaching specific parameters to those events, which help identify users, sessions, and their sources. Some of these parameters are configured in the Google Tag Manager web container, while others are automatically filled based on the type of tag configuration used.
Want to learn more about event parameters and how visitors are recognized by different platforms? Check out our blog article on conversion attribution.
The visuals below provide a simplified explanation of how events from site interactions reach marketing and analytics channels. This aims to clarify the steps involved in a Server-Side Tagging setup compared to Third-Party Pixels or Client-Side Tagging.
Third-Party Pixels can be placed on your site, granting third parties access to create their own events based on site interactions:
With Client-Side Tagging, you place a Google Tag Manager script on your site, allowing you to configure in a Google Tag Manager web container which events should be created based on site interactions. These events are sent directly to platforms from the web container, via the user’s browser:With Server-Side Tagging, events are still created in a Google Tag Manager web container but are sent to a server linked to your primary domain. A Google Tag Manager server container then validates the events received on the server and forwards them to the appropriate platforms.Your marketing and analytics channels receive a variety of events from you, but how do they process these so results appear in your campaign overview and reports populate in Google Analytics? This is achieved by attaching specific parameters to those events, which help identify users, sessions, and their sources. Some of these parameters are configured in the Google Tag Manager web container, while others are automatically filled based on the type of tag configuration used.Want to learn more about event parameters and how visitors are recognized by different platforms? Check out our blog article on conversion attribution.
Updated on: 22/11/2024
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