As users become more privacy aware, as legislative bodies respond to increasing calls for transparent frameworks and as technologies adapt to both in kind, businesses and marketers today face increasing challenges to reliably measure performance of their site and marketing efforts. 

These changes are having direct impacts on the visibility of KPI’s, where we typically see decreases up to 20% due to consent, adblocking and browser restrictions. This means that marketers need to adapt their measurement models, ensure they have robust data collection methods and are integrating 1st party data solutions to improve visibility.  

For these reasons, server-side tracking should be considered a key pillar for your business’s data collection strategy. 

Server-side GTM places a server, which you own, in-between your website and the respective destination for data. This server can run on your existing infrastructure whether you are already using Google’s Cloud Platform, Amazon’s Web Services or Microsoft’s Azure, as well as others. 

This transforms your existing data collection pipeline for digital analytics and marketing from multiple data streams to a single data stream from your website to your server. Once in the sGTM container, you have full control on where and how the data is sent to the respective endpoints. An example of what this can look like is below: 

By implementing sGTM, it enables you to increase; 

• Transparency: By using a single data stream from your website to your server, it ensures data and insights are collected securely through infrastructure you own 

• Control: Data can be transformed in real-time to redact, amend or enhance data before it reaches any 3rd party. This means that you gain complete control over the data passing from your website to platforms 

• Durability: Auto-scaling and highly compatible, sGTM forms the basis of a modern and robust tracking solution 

• Connections: With native integrations across cloud platforms, Google features and other measurement solutions, sGTM can enrich data beyond what is collected client-side for enhanced insights and targeting capabilities 

Many of our clients are experiencing an array of benefits from implementing server-side tracking which include;

• Improved Site Speed 

An online grocer was able to deliver a 7% increase in site speed, through leveraging sGTM to remove tags from the browser and instead place them in their secure server. By reducing the number of data streams and scripts loading on the site they were able to reduce the load within the browser resulting in the performance gains.

• Increased Event Match Quality Scores 

A large UK and Global retailer wanted to improve their visibility of conversions, as well as leverage Facebook Conversions API (CAPI), something only possibly through server-side tracking, to improve match rates and targeting through their social campaigns.

By implementing CAPI through sGTM they were able to increase conversion visibility by 7-13%, as well as increase their Event Match Quality Score by 88%

• Increased Visibility 

Due to the loss of third-party cookies, a fitness centre was struggling to accurately measure conversions, while maintaining customer privacy. They did this by utilising a cookie managed securely by sGTM to improve durability of measuring conversions. By implementing Server-Side Tagging in GTM aligned with a privacy-centric measurement approach they were able to increase conversions by 6.1%

If you haven’t implemented sGTM but are interested in understanding more, please reach out to our team at googletech@merkle.com, and a member of the team will be happy to discuss how sGTM can be of benefit to you. 

If you’ve implemented sGTM and are leveraging platform features such as Enhanced Conversions for Ads, or CAPI for Social platforms, as well as Google’s Tag Gateway, the journey has only just begun, and you can expand your horizons into the Pantheon and beyond. 

This is a collection of connections built to unlock advanced use cases, with minimal effort required compared to engineering the solutions without sGTM. Each feature is named after the Greek Gods and leverages unique capabilities that can empower your analytics and marketing teams. Below, we’ll look at some of the key use cases they can be used in; 

Statuses of tags can be sent to Cloud Logging and/or BigQuery as they are executed, or if they fail. This provides clients with the opportunity to detect immediately if tags are not firing and take action to resolve any issues. This can lead to both improved confidence in the data, and the opportunity to analyse the performance of your tagging in BigQuery, by monitoring execution times. 

Throughout our testing, we have been impressed with the performance of Zeus and is now a key pillar of any sGTM implementation. 

Leveraging the power of Vertex AI, Phoebe can bring real-time prediction into sGTM to enable; bidding towards Life-Time Value, Propensity to return or purchase, Segment audiences and much more. 

The key benefits are that using sGTM with Phoebe can streamline the data pipelines involved, reducing the engineering support typically required, while also enriching data before it is sent to platforms for targeting or analysis 

Provide visitors and customers with tailored messaging based on available data such as their location, user status, recent purchases and more. This can help to increase consumer loyalty by offering customised messages to them, but with minimal effort from your teams.

With Artemis, you can securely bring data from Firestore into sGTM, while Deipneus enables data to be sent back to the website from sGTM through a durable first-party cookie. While both can be used individually, combining them increases personalisation opportunities to be based on available customer data. 

These enable personalisation’s to be tailored to individual users based on their; status, purchase history, value and more. Creating a unique experience to help drive consumer loyalty, site engagement and conversions. 

Moreover, this can be combined with Phoebe to add further options to personalise based on predictive metrics such as LTV, propensity and more. 

The above is just a sample of what is achievable through sGTM Pantheon to support marketers in their digital maturity, with more available from community connections too. If you’d like to know more about either sGTM or Pantheon and how they could be supporting your business and marketing challenges, please contact: googletech@merkle.com