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“Every year since iOS 14, Apple has tightened up its privacy restrictions, making it harder to track people from social media to websites.”
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tl;dr – what you’ll get:
- How to keep your attribution accurate as privacy rules tighten.
- Why server-side tracking has become essential, but isn’t a complete solution.
- Common tracking gaps, including consent misconfiguration and lost links between sessions and orders.
- How to think about tracking budgets and the potential value of more reliable data.
In this episode, find out how to keep your attribution accurate as privacy rules tighten. Your ad management & optimisation is only as good as your tracking.
Listen if you want to spot where your analytics is leaking data and leave with clear first steps to fix it, no analytics background required.
Our guest expert is Littledata founder & CEO Edward Upton.
Key topics:
- Why server-side tracking has become essential, but isn’t a complete solution.
- How privacy changes, cookie consent and Shopify checkout updates affect attribution.
- Where Google Analytics fits alongside platform analytics and other reporting tools.
- Why richer behavioural and event-level data matters for analysis and AI.
- Common tracking gaps, including consent misconfiguration and lost links between sessions and orders.
- How to audit your setup by checking first-page tracking and consent behaviour.
- How to think about tracking budgets and the potential value of more reliable data.
- Who should own tracking and how ecommerce, marketing, CRM, and analytics teams should work together.
- Why first-party identifiers like email are increasingly important as customer journeys move across devices and apps.
Show notes
Tracking ecommerce performance has never been harder. In this episode, we explain why and what brands can do about it.
Why tracking is getting harder
Server-side tracking has gone from cutting-edge to essential, yet many brands still rely on free tools that can’t keep up. Privacy changes add to the pressure:
Why server-side tracking is now essential
Browser-based tracking relies on scripts and cookies that ad blockers, browser restrictions and iOS privacy changes increasingly cut off. Server-side tracking sends events from your server directly to platforms like Google Analytics, Meta and TikTok, so more of your data survives.
What it fixes
- Lost conversions: Fewer events are blocked, so ad platforms see more of your real sales and can optimise better.
- Broken attribution: Order data comes from your store’s backend, which is more reliable than a browser event that may never fire.
- Accelerated checkouts: Orders from wallets like Shop Pay and Apple Pay can be matched back to the original session using first-party data.
The most common problems we see:
- Misconfigured consent banners: Poor setup means lost data. Make sure your first landing page records UTM parameters correctly.
- Orders that can’t be traced to a channel: Accelerated checkouts make it hard to link orders to the original marketing source. First-party data is the fix.
Where Google Analytics fits now
Platform analytics have improved a lot, with better breakdowns and reporting. Google Analytics is no longer the primary tool, but it remains valuable as a secondary source for comparison and for feeding marketing dashboards.
“Google Analytics is still important as a secondary tool, even if it’s not the primary choice anymore.”
What to do next:
- Audit your consent setup. Confirm tracking only fires after consent is given, and that you’re not losing data in the process.
- Standardise your tracking. If you sell across multiple markets and systems, a dedicated tracking app keeps data consistent.
⭐ Key chapters:
- [00:30] — Why ecommerce tracking is getting harder
- [03:00] — Server-side tracking becomes table stakes
- [05:15] — Shopify checkout changes and web pixels
- [07:45] — Google Analytics as a secondary tool
- [11:25] — Behavioral data and AI
- [14:05] — Common tracking problems
- [18:25] — Auditing consent and first-page tracking
- [21:00] — Budgeting for tracking
- [26:50] — Who should own tracking
- [36:05] — What server-side tracking can fix
- [40:10] — Attribution gaps that remain
- [43:00] — Agentic commerce and attribution
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