The scheduled disappearance of third-party cookies has major consequences for advertising targeting. Marketing teams are finding it difficult to track conversions correctly. Cookieless devices are emerging to remedy the situation. Among these, server-side (or S2S, Server 2 server) is one of the most eagerly awaited. Here’s how it works.
Until now, to feed certain partners such as your Analytics tool (e.g. Google Analytics, AT Internet, etc.), advertising platforms (e.g. Google Ads, Facebook Ads), your affiliation platform (e.g. Effinity) or your retargeting partner (e.g. Critero), it was necessary to install scripts or Tags on your website. In the vast majority of cases, these tags are installed via a Tag web container, which is itself hosted on your site. When this container is triggered, information is sent directly from the user’s browser to the partner tags.
In the case of the transition to S2S, the Web Tag container will continue to exist, but its role will not be to call the partner tags, but to feed a server, which will rework and filter the data before sending it to the partner solutions.
The benefits of Server 2 Server
Improved page performance.
As your pages only integrate a container with no script inside, your page loading time will be reduced, and your page performance increased.
Greater data reliability
Using scripts in your website makes you dependent on browser technologies. By switching to Server 2 Server, you’ll benefit from a proprietary cookie environment (First party cookies), enabling you to bypass the ITP/ETP of Safari and Firefox, as well as certain adBlockers, and in the future, you won’t be affected by the end of Google Chrome’s third-party cookies.
Greater compliance with ePrivacy and RGPD measures
Since partners are no longer in direct contact with your visitors, and are no longer integrated directly into your website, they will no longer be able to write to or read from the user’s terminal to access personal or non-personal data.
Control over shared data
In Server 2 Server, you can filter or rework the data you wish to share with your partners in your Server Container.
Why didn’t you install Server 2 Server before?
In recent years, S2S technology has been used mainly for tracking actions in mobile applications. The growth of the mobile application market has enabled this technology to evolve, making it more accessible and industrializable.
Some players like CommandersAct or Eulerian have already been offering this solution for some time, and a player like Google Tag Manager launched the Server side version of Google Tag Manager in summer 2020.
What are the disadvantages of Server Side?
Unlike client-side measurement installation, which is very straightforward, switching to S2S requires technical expertise to install and configure the Server Container.
What’s more, the move to S2S, as shown in the diagram, requires the addition of the Server container brick, which therefore generates an additional cost.
For example, for Google Tag Manager, which is free in its client version, the cost of Server Container hosting for an average site is around €100/month.
In view of the above-mentioned advantages, we can only advise you to switch your website measurement to S2S. Our measurement and data collection tools are already compatible for integration into S2S. To make things easier for you, Effinity will carry out an audit and suggest the most suitable solution: Google Tag Manager, TagCommander, etc.
To find out more, watch our webinar :
https://youtu.be/5-klAaWt3lg
Mis à jour le 23 January 2025
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Mis à jour le 23 January 2025
