The loss of third-party cookies has been shaking the world of digital marketing, threatening to plunge attribution models’ accuracy and reliability close to zero. Server-side tracking could provide a loophole for the problem.
You’re probably more than familiar with the ongoing speculation on what life after cookies means in terms of digital campaigns and their effectiveness.
It all comes down to consumers not wanting their data being abused (at least for free), as well as Big Tech companies fighting against each other by setting up walled gardens for the advertisers.
More and more consumers prefer privacy with their online shopping.
But what if there would be an objective medium between the advertiser and the third-party vendors that would anonymize or pseudonymize the data before sending it onward?
Cue server-side tracking.
In short, the main difference between server-side tracking and client-side tracking is, as the names suggest, how the information is collected upon a website visit.
Whereas traditional client-side tracking relies on the user’s browser (a.k.a. client) to collect and send the information forward to ad tech servers such as Google or Facebook, server-side tracking sends the data to a secure server before sending it forward.
More privacy means less utility in (digital) attribution. But could there be an optimal point somewhere in-between?
Below are some of the main differences between server-side and client-side tracking, as well as what they enable in terms of marketing.
How the information is collected:
What this methodology enables:
Benefits:
Cons:
In short, the most prominent advantage of server-side tracking is that it is not subject to the visitor's browser and device limitations. This means server-side tracking provides a way to circumvent the current and upcoming cookie restrictions set by the most popular browsers.
“This means server-side tracking provides a way to circumvent the current and upcoming cookie restrictions set by the most popular browsers”
Another advantage of server-side tracking is that it can be more secure than client-side tracking because the tracking data is not stored in the visitor's browser, where it could potentially be accessed by third parties.
Proxies might provide a solution to maintain decent privacy levels while sharing data with external parties.
Instead, the data is stored on a secure server, from which the advertiser can choose what data to share with each ad tech server and analytics provider. Having the power to select which data is shared and in what format is one potential solution to keep on using Google Analytics in a GDPR-compliant way, if the proxy server is configured correctly.
“Having the power to select which data is shared and in what format is one potential solution to keep on using Google Analytics in a GDPR-compliant way, if the proxy server is configured correctly”
Being able to do and doing are, however, completely different things in practice. Which brings us to the challenges of server-side tracking.
At first server-side tracking seems like the silver bullet for most of the problems around digital marketing measurement. But with great power comes great responsibility.
As the cons -section above points out, server-side tracking requires a lot of technical know-how around setting up the server, defining what data the server can and should send to the ad tech servers, and keeping up with the latest changes and regulations as this type of integration is very new (it is very likely that you need to make adjustments on monthly basis).
Moreover, servers cost money. There are three cost drivers when it comes to servers and server-side tracking:
As we can see, the edge of tomorrow cuts both ways. It isn’t a plug-and-play solution for cookie depreciation and GDPR regulation, and it can turn out to be quite an expensive option compared to traditional tools.
Time will tell if server-side tracking provides an applicable solution for the cookie apocalypse.
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