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Server-side Tagging in Google Tag Manager: Comprehensive Webinar Overview

google-analyticsserver-sidegdprprivacyintermediate
5/5This webinar provides exceptional educational value with comprehensive coverage of server-side tagging in Google Tag Manager, including technical implementation details, benefits, concerns, and practical demonstrations. The presenter (Simo Ahava) is clearly an expert in the field, offering nuanced perspectives on both technical and ethical considerations while maintaining excellent clarity throughout the 2-hour presentation.
Server-side Tagging in Google Tag Manager - Webinar (North America)

This informative webinar recording provides a thorough introduction to server-side tagging in Google Tag Manager, a significant advancement in how data is collected and processed for analytics and marketing purposes. Presented by Simo Ahava, a respected expert in the field, this 2-hour session explores the features, benefits, and implementation of this powerful GTM capability. The presentation is structured into four key sections: an introduction to server-side tagging, exploration of key benefits and concerns, a live walkthrough of implementation, and an extensive Q&A session. Simo explains how server-side tagging creates a controlled environment between your website and third-party vendors, giving you unprecedented control over data being sent to various analytics and marketing platforms. Key benefits highlighted include reduced client-side bloat by eliminating third-party JavaScript libraries, enhanced data privacy through better PII management, improved security by minimizing cookie leaks, and the ability to leverage Google Cloud Platform's capabilities. The demonstration shows how to migrate from client-side tracking to server-side for both Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4 (App+Web), with practical examples of consolidating data streams and managing cookies more effectively. The webinar also addresses important concerns such as costs (approximately $120 USD monthly for a basic production setup), implementation challenges, and ethical considerations around circumventing ad blockers. Simo emphasizes that server-side tagging is a neutral technology that can be used either to enhance privacy and security or to bypass user consent preferences, depending on how it's implemented. From our perspective at GDPR Server Tracking EU, this webinar demonstrates the power of server-side tracking while highlighting some limitations of Google's implementation. While Google's solution requires their cloud platform with associated costs and potential data residency concerns, our EU-based server-side tracking hosting offers several advantages: guaranteed EU data residency with servers in Finland, bare metal hosting without cloud provider subprocessors, enhanced privacy features for filtering sensitive data, and significantly more competitive pricing. Viewers will gain valuable insights into server-side tagging concepts and implementation from this webinar, but organizations concerned about GDPR compliance, data sovereignty, or seeking more cost-effective alternatives would benefit from exploring our purpose-built EU hosting solution that provides the same functionality with additional privacy safeguards.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about "Server-side Tagging in Google Tag Manager - Webinar (North America)"

Server-side tagging in GTM creates a controlled environment between your website and third-party vendors, allowing you to process data on a server you control before sending it to analytics and marketing platforms. This gives you unprecedented control over data collection, reduces client-side bloat, and enhances security and privacy.

Google's recommended production setup costs approximately $120 USD monthly for three App Engine flexible instances. Costs can increase with higher traffic volumes, more complex payloads, or performance-heavy API calls.

Key benefits include reduced client-side bloat by eliminating third-party JavaScript libraries, enhanced data privacy through better PII management, improved security by minimizing cookie leaks, and the ability to leverage cloud platform capabilities for processing data.

Server-side tagging can enhance GDPR compliance by giving you more control over what data is shared with third parties, allowing you to filter out PII before it leaves your server, and providing better cookie management. However, where your server is hosted matters for data residency requirements.

While Google currently only officially supports GCP deployment, EU-based hosting solutions like gdpr-server-tracking.eu offer alternatives with guaranteed EU data residency, bare metal hosting without cloud provider subprocessors, and enhanced privacy features specifically designed for GDPR compliance.

Migration involves setting up a server container, creating appropriate clients to receive data from your website, configuring tags in the server container to process and forward that data, and updating your website tags to send data to your server endpoint instead of directly to vendors.

Major concerns include the potential to circumvent ad blockers and content blockers, opacity of data collection making it difficult for users to audit, and the lack of built-in consent management. These issues require careful ethical consideration when implementing server-side tagging.

EU-based hosting solutions like ours ensure data remains within EU jurisdiction with servers physically located in Finland, eliminating concerns about data transfers to non-EU countries. This provides stronger GDPR compliance compared to US-based cloud providers and offers additional privacy features specifically designed for EU regulations.