Measurement
Server-side tracking
Server-side tracking sends conversion and behavioural events to analytics and ad platforms from a merchant's own server rather than from the shopper's browser.
It recovers events that browser-based tracking loses to ad blockers, tracking-prevention features and network failures — commonly a substantial share of conversions, which shows up as under-reported performance and worse ad-platform optimisation.
It is not a privacy workaround and should not be sold as one: consent obligations apply to the event regardless of where it is sent from. The gain is reliability, not permission.
The failure mode to watch for is double counting. Running browser and server tracking simultaneously without a shared deduplication key means every conversion the browser did report is counted twice, which inflates reported performance and teaches the ad platform to optimise toward the wrong signal. Both sides must send the same event ID.