Author Archives: Ben Fisher

Bring performance and privacy together with Server-Side Tagging

It’s important for businesses to have the insights they need to drive more conversions on their websites. But rising expectations and regulations around user privacy can make it hard to meet both performance and privacy needs. We’re continuing to invest in solutions to help you find that balance.

Server-Side Tagging in Google Tag Manager allows you to move measurement and advertising tags off your website and into a secure server container. This helps protect your customers by restricting access to their information, and helps increase conversion rates on your site by reducing page load times.

To ensure all businesses can use this feature, Server-Side Tagging now works with any cloud or server provider that supports Docker — an open source platform for developing and running applications. We’ve also integrated Server-Side Tagging into more Google products and services to help you move more tags off your website and achieve better site performance. With these improvements, we're moving Server-Side Tagging out of beta and making it generally available to all customers in Tag Manager and Tag Manager 360.

Support for more Google advertising products

Server-Side Tagging now supports Google Ads and Google Marketing Platform products, including Campaign Manager 360, Display & Video 360 and Search Ads 360. Previously, you had to continue using a client-side tag for each marketing product you use, and keep them all running directly on your site.

Now, when customers interact with your site, a single client-side tag can activate multiple tags for these products directly in your server container. This means you’ll have fewer tags on your site, which can help improve your site's page load time.

  • A slide that reads “What's the difference between client-side tagging and server-side tagging?” with a blue price tag within a circle.

    Learn the difference between client-side tagging and server-side tagging. 

  • A slide that explains client-side tagging using images of a consumer shopping site and tags on the site sending data directly to respective platforms.

    Client-side tagging implementation when consumer is shopping online. 

  • A slide that explains server-side tagging using images of a consumer shopping site using one tag to send data to a server container then the secure server sending the data to respective platforms.

    Server-side tagging implementation when consumer is shopping online. 

Integration with other privacy solutions

Marketers often ask us how to use Server-Side Tagging with other privacy solutions like Consent Mode and enhanced conversions. Consent Mode helps you customize how Google tags behave before and after users make their consent decisions; and enhanced conversions help you use consented, first-party, user-provided data to better understand how users convert after engaging with your ads.

We're now making it simpler to use these products together. Advertisers with Google Analytics 4 on their sites will soon be able to use enhanced conversions in Google Ads without needing to add additional tags to their site. And once you’ve set up Consent Mode, any Google tags implemented in your server container will automatically respect consent choices that users have made on your website.

We're also making it easier for you to ensure that user data is handled according to your security preferences. Server-Side Tagging automatically anonymizes your users’ IP addresses before the information is shared with Google’s reporting tools. And in cases where you need more control, you have the option to eliminate users’ IP addresses from your data completely before they’re shared.

Success with Server-Side Tagging

Since launching Server-Side Tagging last year, we’ve seen businesses around the world use this feature to uphold higher expectations around user privacy and drive better marketing performance.

Nemlig, Denmark’s leading online grocer, saw a large rise in visitors to its site as people turned to online shopping and home delivery for their daily essentials last year. This resulted in longer page load times, which negatively impacted conversion rates on Nemlig’s site. After adopting Server-Side Tagging, the company was able to move tags from the browser into its secure server container, improving its page load time by 7%. Read the full story here.

Square has also found success with Server-Side Tagging. The San Francisco-based company helps businesses of all sizes reach buyers online and in person, manage their business and access financing. Since implementing Server-Side Tagging, Square has seen a 46% increase in reported conversions.

Server-Side Tagging is our preferred method for sending measurement data to our marketing partners. It allows us to collect data from the website in a secure manner while improving data collection and enabling event enrichment. Doug Logue
Sr Product Manager of Marketing Technology, Square

With Server-Side Tagging, you can improve both user trust and website performance. As we continue to work on new features and updates, our goal is to help you achieve your privacy and performance goals across all of your measurement needs.

Related Article

Improve performance and security with Server-Side Tagging

We’re introducing Server-Side Tagging to Google Tag Manager and Tag Manager 360. You will now be able to move many third-party tags off y...

Read Article

Improve performance and security with Server-Side Tagging

To measure the effectiveness of digital campaigns and understand the customer journey, businesses often work with a variety of technology partners. Doing so typically requires businesses to add JavaScript code written by these partners, also known as third-party tags, directly to their websites. But when too many tags load on a site, it can negatively affect the customer experience--and conversion rates. Plus, since third-party tags running directly on a site could have broad access to information entered on that page, it’s important for businesses to have control over what information those tags can access.

To help address these challenges, we’re introducing Server-Side Tagging to Google Tag Manager and Tag Manager 360. You’ll now be able to move many third-party tags off your site and into a new server container hosted in your Google Cloud account. That means when customers interact with a page on your site, third-party tags are loaded directly in the server container rather than the site. This provides you with faster page load times, greater security for your customer data, and additional data controls.

Deliver faster site experiences to your customers

When you move third-party tags off your site, fewer tags must load when your customers visit – leading to faster page load times. A recent research study showed that a decrease in page load times for mobile sites improved progression rates for every step of the purchase funnel for all brands surveyed. In fact, for retail sites every 0.1 second reduction in mobile site speed on average increases average order value by nearly 10 percent.

Consider an ecommerce retailer that works with many technology partners to execute marketing campaigns and measure customer behavior. Whenever this retailer wants to work with a new partner, for example to run email marketing campaigns, it needs to add a new third-party tag to its site to measure success. Instead of doing that, the retailer can now place the new tag into its server container in Tag Manager. And when a customer loads the retailer’s site, this tag will run in the server container after the page loads. This allows businesses to measure the success of their campaign without impacting the customer experience.

Secure your customer data

When customers engage with your business online, they share information with you. You want to ensure that information is safe and only authorized partners are able to access it.

When third-party tags are implemented directly on your site, these tags are able to access and interact with other information customers are entering into your site. With Server-Side Tagging, you place third-party tags in a secure server container in your Google Cloud project. This means tags in your server container only have access to information sent to the server and no longer have access to the information entered on your site. And because these tags are placed into your server container, you gain visibility into what data the tags are collecting and where that information is being sent.

Control the behavior of third-party tags

Tag Manager already allows you to control third-party tag behavior through a sandboxed version of JavaScript, ready-to-go tag templates fromthe Community Template Gallery, and a permissions model for all third-party tags. All of these capabilities continue to be available with Server-Side Tagging.

Each tag that you add to your server container will have to declare how it will behave, for example which cookies can be accessed or where data can be sent. And you can also set policies to automatically control what tags are allowed to do. This helps you ensure that any new tags added to your container follow the same permissions so you do not need to continuously check tag behaviors in the future.

Get started with Server-Side Tagging

Server-Side Tagging is now available to all Tag Manager and Tag Manager 360 accounts. When you log into your Tag Manager account, you can create a new server container and connect it with a new or existing Cloud account. You can learn more about setting up Server-Side Tagging for your business with this guide. And if you don’t have a Tag Manager account, you can create one for free.