The tracking method most marketers haven't adopted yet

Author

Jeff Sauer
December 01, 2025

In partnership with

Are Ad Blockers Killing Your ROAS?

I'm at the DARM Conference in Miramar Beach this week.

Tomorrow morning, I am presenting on something that's been quietly reshaping how ad tracking works—server-side tracking.

If you work with clients running ads, or you're just trying to understand why tracking got harder, this might be useful context.

You’ve probably heard this story dozens of times by now… 

Around 2021, Apple introduced App Tracking Transparency. iOS started asking users if apps could track them. Most people said no.

At the same time, browsers started blocking third-party cookies by default. Safari, Firefox, even Chrome started restricting what tracking pixels could see.

The old "sprinkle pixels everywhere" approach stopped working as well.

Meta campaigns saw about a 37% drop in measured click-through rates after ATT—not because the ads got worse, but because the measurement got worse.

Somewhere between 25-50% of conversions became invisible to the platforms. Ad blockers, privacy settings, cookie restrictions... all working against the “old way” of doing things.

We call the “old way” of doing things client-side tracking.

With the old way, the browser loads a pixel. The pixel talks directly to Facebook or Google Ads. Simple.

But when browsers and operating systems started blocking that communication, the data got incomplete.

Platforms started optimizing campaigns with partial information, which meant worse results, or at least worse visibility into what was actually working.

Server-side tracking is the workaround.

Instead of the browser talking directly to ad platforms, it talks to your server first. Your server then sends the data to Facebook, Google Ads, your analytics tool - wherever you need it to go.

You have more control over what data gets sent and how it's formatted. The platforms see more complete conversion data.

Same marketing. Same budget. Just better data reaching the platforms, which means better results.

That's the first part of what I am teaching tomorrow.

The second part is about MCPs—Model Context Protocol.

It's a new standard (introduced in January 2025) that enables AI to access data in your marketing tools safely.

Instead of logging into Google Analytics, downloading a CSV, and analyzing it manually... You can ask an AI questions and have it query your live data directly.

It pulls the answer from your actual accounts. In seconds.

The setup is surprisingly fast if you have the proper instructions. Even the non-technical people at the conference will be getting connected in about five minutes.

Here's my question:

Would it be useful if I wrote a detailed breakdown of how to set up your own MCP server?

We find that walking through this process is super helpful, and it might be a good topic for a future newsletter if there's interest.

Just reply and let me know.

Server-side tracking fixes the data foundation. MCPs make that data actually usable without living in dashboards.

Both are part of the CLEAN data principles we teach. And both are becoming more common as the industry adapts to first-party tracking.

Thought it was worth sharing what I'm teaching on stage this week.

To Your Measured Success!

To Your Measured Success!

–Jeff Sauer

Co-Founder of MeasureU.com


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