A practical guide to server-side tracking and consent management
Cookie deprecation, stricter browser privacy settings, and the increasing use of ad blockers all make gathering reliable marketing and analytics data challenging. For many businesses, this translates to diminished data accuracy and broken insights.
Enter server-side tracking (SST). By shifting data collection away from the user’s browser and onto your own server, SST gives you greater control over how you manage incoming data, including how it’s processed and which platforms receive it.
When you implement server-side tracking, you can gather data responsibly while integrating privacy considerations early. That is, if you follow the right steps.
Let’s look at how consent works in a server-side setup, what you need to get started with server-side data collection, and how tools like the Usercentrics CMP can help.
Key takeaways
- Server-side tracking shifts data collection from users’ browsers to your own servers, giving you more control over what data is processed and shared.
- Compared to client-side tracking, SST improves data accuracy, enhances website performance, and supports compliance with privacy regulations.
- Implementing server-side tracking requires valid user consent, making a consent management platform essential for capturing and transmitting consent signals.
- Privacy compliance depends on aligning with a patchwork of global privacy frameworks, each with specific consent requirements.
- Server-side tracking helps future-proof your data collection by reducing your reliance on third-party cookies and making insights more resilient to browser restrictions.
What is server-side tracking?
Server-side tracking is a method for collecting, processing, and storing information about website visitors and their activities in your business’s server infrastructure. In more technical terms, it’s the process of managing tracking tags on dedicated servers to generate first-party data and enforce consent management processes.
In practice, it’s the opposite of client-side tracking. In a client-side setup, scripts and cookies are run in a user’s browser to capture data and communicate it directly to third-party platforms like Google Analytics, Google Ads, or Meta Ads.
But with server-side setups, when your systems register user interactions on your website or app, such as via page loads or button clicks, the information is relayed to your own server. From there, it can be validated, enriched, or anonymized before being sent downstream to third-party services.
Learn everything you need to know in our server-side tagging guide, from how it works to how to set it up yourself.
Are there benefits to server-side tracking?
There can be some major benefits of server-side tracking methods compared to client-side data collection:
- Collect more accurate and complete data: Browser restrictions can block cookies and other tracking methods that client-side tracking relies on. That means when you use client-side tracking, there’s a chance that you might not even be able to gather the data you need.
- Improve your website’s performance: Fewer scripts running in the background means faster page loads. This leads to a better user experience and ultimately more conversions.
- Better manage how user data is collected and handled: You can control what data you gather, how it’s stored, and who can access it, within your organization and beyond.
- Easier privacy compliance: You control the data, including how users’ consent decisions are respected. You also oversee the storage and handling of their data, and can align both with the data protection regulations and frameworks that apply to your business.
What does server-side tracking mean for consent?
Server-side tagging and tracking supports your data collection and privacy compliance strategy. When implemented properly, this approach enables you to adjust what data is collected, transformed, or forwarded based on a user’s consent choices.
While it enables you to define where and how the data you collect is processed, it doesn’t change your legal obligations under data protection regulations like the GDPR or the CCPA.
That means you’ll still need to obtain valid user consent before collecting, handling, or sharing personal data. You’re also obligated to honor a user’s choices at every step of the process.
Server-side tracking and key data privacy frameworks
Data privacy, and therefore the collection of server-side data, isn’t governed by a single global standard. Rather, it’s covered by a patchwork of regulations, frameworks, and guidelines applicable across regions and industries.
For instance, the United States does not have a single federal data privacy law, but to date there are over 20 state-level privacy laws in place, along with more targeted data privacy laws, like those governing access to children’s data or healthcare information.
Companies may need to comply with differing rules for every state in which they do business, along with regulations specific to their industry or other global regions where they operate.
It’s also worth noting that some privacy frameworks are legally binding, with strict penalties for noncompliance, while others provide more general recommendations or establish best practices and aren’t strictly enforced.
For example, the EU has both the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the ePrivacy Directive. The former is a binding regulation while the latter is a set of guidelines that individual countries in the region have been encouraged to add into their own regulations. In both cases, national data protection authorities in EU Member States handle enforcement.
As a result, privacy compliance often requires adhering to multiple standards. And legal requirements may not align with the expectations of your customer base as consumers become increasingly privacy-conscious.
Below are some of the most prominent data privacy laws along with details about who they apply to and the types of consent they require.
| Country or region | Major data privacy framework | Who it applies to | Consent requirements when implementing SST |
| European Union | GDPR | Controllers or processors handling the personal data of people located in the EU | Consent must be specific, informed, explicit, and easy to withdraw |
| ePrivacy Directive | Websites using cookies or similar trackers | Users must opt in to the use of non-essential cookies or similar tracking technologies | |
| USA | CCPA/CPRA | Businesses with revenue exceeding $25 million or that collect personal data from more than 100,000 California residents | Must provide users with a privacy notice and the ability to opt out of data collection (in most cases) |
| Other US state-level laws | Thresholds vary, but increasingly revenue-based thresholds are being abandoned in favor of requirements for consumers and/or processing volumes | Must provide users with a privacy notice and the ability to opt out of data collection (in most cases) | |
| Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) | Websites or apps that collect information from children aged 13 or under | Must provide notice of data collection and sharing practices and obtain verifiable parental consent | |
| Gramm Leach Bliley Act (GLBA) | Financial institutions (e.g., banks and insurance providers) processing “non-public personal information” | Required to provide notice of data collection and sharing practices and provide opt-out options | |
| Health Insurance Portability and Accounting Act (HIPAA) | Businesses and entities handling Protected Health Information (PHI) | Must have valid authorization before data processing and sharing and facilitate consent withdrawal | |
| Canada | Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) | Private sector organizations collecting, using, or disclosing personal data of Canadian residents in the course of commercial activities | Must obtain informed consent before collecting or sharing data and must provide mechanisms for opting out |
| Brazil | General Law for the Protection of Personal Data (LGPD) | Processors or controllers handling data of individuals in Brazil | Users must give free, informed, and explicit consent for data collection and sharing |
How to collect consent for server-side tracking in four steps
Aligning your server-side tracking practices with the regulations that apply to your business requires the right consent infrastructure.
Follow the four steps below for an implementation that prioritizes consent.
1. Implement a consent management platform that passes consent data to your server
The first step is to select a CMP that easily integrates with a server-side setup. This will help to ensure that consent signals can be captured at the first point of interaction and reliably passed on to your backend systems.
Usercentrics CMP is purpose-built for exactly these types of data flows. Customizable consent banners make it easy for users to provide consent in alignment with the relevant privacy regulations in their region.
An integrated server-side tagging solution enables real-time consent signal transmission across your tech stack, making it easier to enforce user consent choices and achieve regulatory compliance.
Get started: Usercentrics connects consent management to Server-Side Tagging and tracking to strengthen user privacy.
2. Display a compliant consent banner
You’ll need to provide your website visitors and app users with a consent banner that meets the requirements of the relevant data privacy laws and your data operations.
You’ll need to provide clear information about what data you collect and why. You may need to obtain consent before collecting data, or enable users to opt out at any time. Or you may need to give them granular control over whether data can be collected for specific purposes, like analytics or marketing.
The Usercentrics CMP also simplifies this process. Its geolocation feature gives you the ability to create and configure consent banners that reflect the data privacy laws in place where your users are located (and present clear information in their preferred language.)
You can also easily create and link to privacy policies that outline your data collection and processing practices, which is another pretty standard requirement of these regulations.
3. Configure your server to apply consent rules and forward only privacy-compliant data
Your server needs to be configured to apply users’ consent preferences and prevent unauthorized or nonconsented data processing before passing data to third parties.
Configuration involves setting up logic filters or conditions that signal instances when data should be processed and how. For example, if a user declines web analytics tracking, your server should prevent their session events from being passed to Google Analytics.
Once your consent rules have been enforced by your server, it can then forward the data that aligns with each user’s consent choices to support compliance with relevant laws.
4. Audit and maintain consent records
To demonstrate privacy compliance, you’ll need to keep a record of your server-side setup. Logs should include how consent is collected, the consent choices users make, how data is filtered, and which third-party platforms you send the data to.
In the event of either data subject requests from users or an investigation or audit by authorities, this documentation can demonstrate that you record, respect, and consistently enforce the consent choices of your website visitors.
Maintaining these records is made much easier when you use a CMP like Usercentrics’. It can automatically log consent decisions over time and sync them to your server, helping to demonstrate that you have a lawful basis for data processing.
The privacy-friendly path to accurate, reliable data
Server-side tracking is a resilient, privacy-conscious approach to collecting data from your website visitors.
Setup doesn’t have to be any more complex than client-side tracking. With Usercentrics CMP, you can easily obtain compliant consent and pass it directly to the server environment managed by your business.
As a result, you get more accurate, fully consented data about user behavior delivered straight to your web server, which can then power insights and campaigns. That means you gain a better understanding of your customers without compromising on data privacy compliance.