How is it implemented and what might be the additional costs?
Posted: Sun Dec 22, 2024 6:53 am
While it's true that I told you earlier that you reduce the exposure of user credentials on the browser by adopting a server-side tracking solution, the downside is that what happens on the server is less controllable and more opaque.
Spam risk and high bill : another risk is that the requests sent from the client to the server could be hacked, impacting the final costs (it is true that in GCP, in the Billing > Budget&Alerts section, it is possible to insert alerts for cost monitoring, but it is important to be aware of the problem).
If I have to summarize the main steps of the russian numbers implementation, I can tell you that these are the main steps to follow:
server-side GTM container creation directly from Tag Manager ;
server-side custom domain verification and mapping: at the beginning of the implementation, a domain is provided, which hosts the server container, which belongs to Google (you can recognize it because it has the name appspot.com ). It will be necessary to create a tracking subdomain linked to your domain (e.g.: if my site is www.mysite.it the subdomain could be gtm.mysite.it or data.mysite.it )
create Clients to process incoming requests
Update GTM settings to send data to server-side container
verify and test incoming requests
send first data from server-side container to third-party providers
If you are using Google Cloud Platform, upgrade to the App Engine Flexible environment
publish the container, monitor costs and increase tracking over time with the aim of running client-side and server-side tracking in parallel
Regarding costs, let's say that, in addition to what was said above, you have to consider the effort to dedicate to the solution. You can't think that server-side tracking is something pre-packaged that you set up and then let it go (in reality it can't be like that for client-side tracking either).
Spam risk and high bill : another risk is that the requests sent from the client to the server could be hacked, impacting the final costs (it is true that in GCP, in the Billing > Budget&Alerts section, it is possible to insert alerts for cost monitoring, but it is important to be aware of the problem).
If I have to summarize the main steps of the russian numbers implementation, I can tell you that these are the main steps to follow:
server-side GTM container creation directly from Tag Manager ;
server-side custom domain verification and mapping: at the beginning of the implementation, a domain is provided, which hosts the server container, which belongs to Google (you can recognize it because it has the name appspot.com ). It will be necessary to create a tracking subdomain linked to your domain (e.g.: if my site is www.mysite.it the subdomain could be gtm.mysite.it or data.mysite.it )
create Clients to process incoming requests
Update GTM settings to send data to server-side container
verify and test incoming requests
send first data from server-side container to third-party providers
If you are using Google Cloud Platform, upgrade to the App Engine Flexible environment
publish the container, monitor costs and increase tracking over time with the aim of running client-side and server-side tracking in parallel
Regarding costs, let's say that, in addition to what was said above, you have to consider the effort to dedicate to the solution. You can't think that server-side tracking is something pre-packaged that you set up and then let it go (in reality it can't be like that for client-side tracking either).