Understanding attendee behaviour and preferences is crucial for an event organiser’s success, but with increasing browser restrictions around cookies and data collection, traditional tracking methods are facing limitations. As these challenges grow, server-side tracking offers a robust method of gathering accurate and comprehensive data without relying on client-side methods that are often blocked or restricted. In this blog, we’ll explain why server-side tracking is winning out over client-side tracking, how to implement it with Eventix, and the current limitations.

Why does server-side tracking matter?

Why do we use tracking?

When it comes to tracking in general, you can set a wide array of goals and achieve them through various methods. For example, you may want to:

• Identify where users are abandoning the ticket purchasing process to improve user experience and reduce drop-off rates
• Gain additional insights into ticket buyers by implementing a tracking pixel
• Determine the effectiveness of your campaign by measuring the conversions
• Ensure privacy-compliant data collection for marketing optimisation

At the end of the day, you’ll want to use this information to improve the user experience, optimise your marketing strategies and measure the efficiency and success of your advertising campaigns.

How server-side tracking differs from client-side tracking

Client-side tracking with the help of tracking pixels

Client-side tracking is currently the most used form of tracking, and at Eventix, we use Google Tag Manager (GTM) for this. This boils down to the user navigating their browser and the browser communicating with Google Tag Manager.

Currently, GTM acts as a catalyst through which pixels and trackers can be monitored. For example, you can keep track of your Meta Pixel, TikTok Pixel and Google Analytics all in one spot. This allows you to track user actions or events by adding a tag such as: ‘purchase’, ‘add to cart / remove for cart’, ‘impression’, ‘interaction’ or ‘order submitted’ and more.

Server-side tracking

The difference with server-side tracking is that the flow of data is different. Instead of loading the tracking tags from the client’s browser, we collect the tags from our Eventix servers. This setup acts as a middle layer, allowing you to decide precisely which data is sent to which platforms. A significant advantage of this approach is that it protects your data stream from being blocked by adblockers and cookie consent forms, ensuring a more reliable collection of your attendee insights.

Best Practice: Hybrid tracking

The best way to run your campaigns is by combining GTM and server-side tracking. The good news is that the data gathered client-side and server-side is automatically deduplicated, which ensures that you won’t have any issues with the same event being tagged twice. By combining the two types of tracking, you can benefit from the best of both worlds.

How tracking has changed

The problem with client-side tracking arises when a user has an adblocker, does not consent to cookies, the cookies are blocked by the browser, they opt out of app-based tracking on Apple devices, or their session expires. In these scenarios, GTM will be blocked and unable to combine the data of people entering your shop with the data of completed sales. Since these issues are becoming more common due to stricter browsers and increasing privacy regulations, data collected through client-side tracking is becoming less reliable, and there is a lot of demand for an alternative.

Adblockers

Many users, especially younger, privacy-conscious ones, use ad-blockers or browsers that block client-side tracking scripts. Since server-side tracking operates from Eventix’s servers, ad-blockers can’t interfere, giving you access to data from all users.

Cookie consent

With stricter privacy laws, client-side tracking often fails when users decline cookies. Server-side tracking, however, doesn’t rely on browser cookies in the same way, allowing for compliant data collection even without explicit cookie consent.

iOS 14.5

Since iOS 14.5 Apple requires users to opt-in to app-based tracking. This reduces data from client-side tracking as users often opt out. Server-side tracking bypasses these constraints by processing data at the server level, ensuring consistent, compliant data collection.

Expired sessions

Server-side tracking remains stable across sessions, capturing data regardless of browser activity, and works well with mobile users and privacy-focused browsers that often restrict client-side scripts.

Avoiding this with server-side tracking

Server-side tracking allows you to avoid these issues while remaining compliant with privacy laws. This is fantastic news for event organisers, as this means that you can track more and expand your audience beyond what would be possible using only pixels and GTM.

Server-side tracking with Eventix Connections

We’re happy to announce that you can now set up server-side tracking yourself through Eventix. Our Connections tool lets you set up your server-side tracking directly in the Eventix dashboard. You will find the Solutions tab on the Connections page in the dashboard, where you can easily install server-side tracking for the Facebook Conversion API and Google Ads.

Please read our guides to find out how to install server-side tracking for the Facebook Conversion API and Google Ads.

More connections are on the way

At the moment, our server-side tracking is able to connect with both Google Ads and the Facebook Conversion API. We are working on integrating the TikTok Pixel and many more and will update you when they are available. Let us know if you have any suggestions for integrations.

Currently, all essential events needed for conversion tracking are supported through server-side tracking, and we are continuously working to expand and enhance this feature set.

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out via info@eventix.io.