Is server side tagging worth it

[fathom53]

All your questions depend on what industry you run ads in, what your tech stack is like and how conversion data you get right now vs the ad spend in your ad account.

Ecom spending $20,000 per month is different than ecom spending $250,000 per month, even if both are on Shopify. Same applies if you do most lead gen and local type clients.

[paul_944]

“Branded search is heavily over attributed” – this may sound like a naive question, but are you certain it isn’t the case? Unless constrained, Google Ads has a tendency to allocate most of the budget towards branded as it’s easier to demonstrate RoAS that way

“Also for context our conversions are offline conversions imported from a CRM so Google Tag Gatwway isn’t an option since my understanding is that’s only for Google hosted services .” – if the CRM tracks and sends click IDs, you should be fine; if it’s sending hashed emails/phones, make sure that Enhanced Conversions are set up on the website. You may also wish to look into CDPs and attribution tools – Able CDP etc. They provide an independent attribution of offline conversions so you have a reliable source of data to compare ad platform reports / GA with; they also send click IDs with offline conversion uploads, more predictable/transparent than relying on hashed emails and Enhanced Conversions. sGTM is pointless for CRM conversions as it’s designed to proxy browser events primarily, not the offline ones.

[Single-Sea-7804]

It’s worth it if you have many conversion per month (100+) and multiple conversion actions and/or channels you spend money on. It makes tracking that much better.

[Luc_ElectroRaven]

I’ve deployed it across many clients.

time to setup depends on how familiar you are with the process.

it usually recovered 20 – 30% of data loss.

It works across all platforms and if you’re uploading offline conversions it’s actually more useful I think because you really need to grab the click ids and other info so you can match the records.

[AccomplishedTart9015]

erver side can be worth it, but it’s not a magic uplift button. it mostly improves data quality.

the biggest wins are fewer conversions falling into direct because params get dropped, and better matching for platforms like meta when browsers block cookies. for google, if u already import offline conversions via gclid, the lift on bidding can be smaller. the bigger benefit is cleaner cross channel reporting and fewer gaps.

time to implement depends on how clean ur current setup is. if events and ids are already consistent, it’s fairly quick. if tracking is messy, it turns into a longer project.

also, branded over attribution usually won’t be fixed by server side alone. that’s more about utm discipline, redirects, and how the crm is stitching sources.

[ppcbetter_says]

Yes, if you do it right.

You need to focus on bidding to server tagged events that bots can’t do.

[QuantumWolf99]

Honestly for your specific situation… server-side GTM won’t solve the branded search over-attribution problem. That’s a last-click attribution issue, not a data loss issue.

SST helps most with ad blocker losses and Safari ITP cookie extension. For CRM offline conversions you’re already bypassing the browser entirely, so the uplift will be minimal.

[springbd]

if your conversions are coming offline from a crm then server side tagging is basically mandatory to fix that direct traffic over attribution.. client side pixels drop the original click ids because of ad blockers or safari tracking prevention so when the crm finally reports the sale the platform just defaults to direct or branded search.. passing that offline conversion back through a server container lets you stitch the user data back to the actual top of funnel click..

[isired]

After overhauling our tracking setup (that was cobbled together as IT staff changed and Google changed) we got correct attribution & full utm pass through on about 99% of user records; we inplemented server side and closed that to 98%, which is acceptable, as we’re using offline conversion tracking as well so a good % of the 2% are matching with phone & email provided, no GCLID.

[ernosem]

Some CRM software eg Hubspot has an integrated multi-touchpoint tool, so it can tell you the original source of the lead. Unfortunately this is also cookie based, so no cookie means no attribution.
There are two other B2B focused tools, they are not exactly server-side, but for attribution purposes.
Dreamdata & Ruler Analytics both built for the B2B space. I have seen Hubspot from the inside multiple times, I just heard about the other two, but might worth checking.