Ads, Tracking, Analytics and Dataviz
You’ve heard the term “server-side tracking” thrown around like it’s the holy grail of analytics. But let’s be honest—most explanations either oversimplify it to the point of uselessness or dive so deep into technical jargon that you need a PhD…
Most advertisers assume that Enhanced Conversions (EC) and Customer Match (CM) are nearly the same thing. Both use hashed email addresses.Both rely on Google’s identity graph.Both “match” users inside Google’s ecosystem. This leads many teams to believe that importing a…
GTM, Adobe Launch, Matomo – and why a “universal consent dataLayer” does not exist Many teams assume that CMPs (Axeptio, Didomi, OneTrust, Cookiebot…) all push the same consent attributes into the dataLayer.This is false. Each Tag Manager (Google Tag Manager,…
Google Analytics 4 does support offline data import.But most implementations aren’t compatible with it — not because GA4 is limited, but because the tracking foundations weren’t designed with offline reconciliation in mind. And offline import in GA4 is nothing like…
Most marketers assume Google Ads and Meta Ads automatically attach UTM parameters to their URLs.They don’t.Not by mistake, but by design. Both platforms prefer to keep analysis inside their own ecosystem. UTMs are “data escape hatches”: as soon as they…
Shopify has modernized its tracking ecosystem with the introduction of Web Pixels — a concept I’ve covered before.It’s clean, sandboxed, privacy-compliant… but it remains primarily site-centric.The Web Pixel listens to Shopify-native events such as product_viewed, add_to_cart, and checkout_completed, yet it…
With the growing adoption of server-side tagging, many people assume that using a custom domain automatically means the data is collected server-side.It sounds logical — but the reality is more nuanced. There are two independent dimensions to consider: Case 1:…
1. What Is a Conversion Pixel and Why Is It Important? A conversion pixel is a snippet of code you add to your website to track user interactions—from purchases to form submissions. Installing Google Ads or Meta Ads (Facebook/Instagram) pixels…
Why Audience Setup in Google Ads and Meta Ads is Critical for Performance (And How to Do It Right) When I first started running paid advertising campaigns, I thought success was all about technical execution: setting up conversion tracking, writing…
🔍 Intro Let’s say you want to plug into your analytics tool — Google Analytics 4, Adobe Analytics, or Matomo — and pull data through their API.The naive approach? “I’ll just call the API endpoint and get the data.” ❌…