Simply Explained: Tags Consolidation using Server-Side Tagging

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Previously we briefly explained that, by using server-side tagging (SST), you can consolidate multiple tags into a single tag. In this article, we will explain this concept in more detail.

Quick Recap on SST

In standard client-side tagging, the browser is making the connections directly to the third-party endpoints (shown in orange text):

These connections can be blocked by the browser due to the browser’s tracking prevention techniques or ad blocking extensions.

By implementing SST, you introduce a “proxy server” that is owned by the website (eg. mywebsite.com):

Now the browser is making connection to the same first-party mywebsite.com domain, it is less likely for the connection to be blocked (shown in green text).

Tags Consolidation

If you look at diagram above, we can certainly do the same for the Google Ads and Facebook tags. However, this would mean that we are not making full use of another SST feature — tags consolidation.

By using tags consolidation, you can reduce the tag connections that the browser has to make:

This can greatly improve the browser’s efficiency in terms of bandwidth and computing power, especially for users with low-powered devices.

How to do Tags Consolidation

In order to do tags consolidation, there must be a master event stream. If you are using Google Analytics, GA4 should become the master event stream.

The reason is that, as an analytics tool, GA4 will tend to record a lot of events. Examples:

• Pageview
• Click
• Form submission
• View product, add to cart, checkout, purchase
• Membership sign up / login
• and more

Whereas marketing tags typically only use a subset of the events captured by GA4. Examples:

• Pageview (on confirmation page)
• Membership sign up
• Purchase

A simplified illustration of the events used:

Non-GA4 Event Parameters

Some marketing tags may required additional custom parameters that are not already captured by GA4. In this case, you have to:

1. At client-side GTM, include the additional parameters in GA4 event tags (you can do this via the Event Settings variable).
2. At server-side GTM, configure the marketing tags to use the additional parameters. These parameters can be ignored by the server-side GA4 tags.

To illustrate, let’s say we want to include the Gender (ge) and Date of Birth (db) parameters in the Facebook tag, and let’s use the page_view event as a simplified example:

Considerations Before Adopting Tags Consolidation

Tags consolidation is a great way to improve browser efficiency which in turns should improve user experience.

However, the implementation can take a lot of effort. This is especially true when typically the analytics and marketing tags are implemented and maintained by different teams. Proper planning is required and clear instructions need to shared to teams maintaining the marketing tags to ensure correct implementation, and this may require team training.

Understanding this, you need to weight if the effort is worth adopting tags consolidation, and when you should adopt it.

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