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Concept

Server-side tracking: delivering conversions from your infrastructure

Server-side tracking sends conversion events from your server (or tracker) directly to ad platforms, instead of relying on browser tags and cookies.

Server-side tracking

Server-side tracking delivers conversion events from your own infrastructure — a tracker, a CRM or a dedicated routing service — directly to the ad platform's server API. The browser stops being the only witness: a conversion that the browser never saw (a phone sale, a postback from a tracker, a lost cookie) still reaches the platform through the server channel.

What it fixes

Browser tags die with blocked JavaScript, cleared cookies and intelligent tracking prevention. A server event bypasses all three because it originates from your infrastructure, not from the user's browser. The platform receives the conversion with the click ID and hashed user data, so attribution and optimisation keep working where the pixel alone undercounts.

What it does not fix

A server event is only as good as its payload. Missing click ID passthrough, double-hashed emails or a purchase mapped to the wrong event name produce delivered-but-useless events with the same reliability as everything else. Matching quality (how well the platform ties events to users) becomes the metric to watch, and deduplication keeps the browser and server channels from counting one conversion twice.

Sources

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Related concepts

Concept

Offline conversion: the conversion no browser pixel ever sees

An offline conversion happens outside the tracked web or app session - an in-store purchase, a CRM deal, a phone order. Platforms accept them through server channels, with longer delivery windows than web events.

Concept

Match rate: how many of your events a platform can tie to a real user

Match rate is the share of sent events that TikTok (or Meta) successfully matched to a real user profile - the quality metric of server-side delivery.

Concept

Match key: the identifiers that tie a server event to a real user

A match key is an identifier in an event payload - click ID, hashed email or phone, IP with user agent, mobile ad ID - that lets the ad platform tie the event to a real profile. Snapchat rejects events without one.

Concept

Standard events: Meta's fixed vocabulary for conversion actions

Standard events are Meta's predefined event names - Purchase, Lead, InitiateCheckout and others - that its optimisation and reporting understand out of the box.

Concept

Events API: TikTok's server-side interface for conversion events

The Events API is TikTok's interface for sending conversion events from your server, complementing the TikTok Pixel where browser tracking is lost.

Concept

Event Quality Score: how platforms grade the completeness of your events

An event quality score is the platform's grade of how complete an event payload is: Meta's Event Match Quality runs 0-10, Pinterest targets a "Good" EQS, Reddit and Snapchat surface warnings in their test views.