Server-side Tracking

Server-side Tracking

With our server-side tracking solution, we help you gain better insight into the online behavior of your fans, so you better understand how your marketing campaigns are performing and how they move through your ticket shop. Unlike traditional client-side tracking (the well-known pixels), our server-side tracking solution offers several advantages:
  1. Cookies from tools such as Meta (Facebook & Instagram) and Google Ads are placed as first-party cookies instead of third-party cookies. This is essential for browsers that block third-party cookies by default, such as Safari and Firefox, but also when Chrome will soon start blocking third-party cookies.
  2. Avoid detection by ad blockers, which can result in 10 to 30% more data.
  3. Extend the cookie lifetime for the Safari browser from a maximum of 7 days to 13 months.
  4. All of this contributes to more accurate data, resulting in better attribution of your marketing campaigns.
We have made server-side tracking as simple as possible for you. You do not need to set up your own servers or send requests to the Meta and Google servers yourself. We do this for you, completely free of charge. Follow the steps below to set up server-side tracking yourself and benefit from all the advantages.

1. Custom Domain Shop
To benefit from everything server-side tracking has to offer, it is essential to use your own domain for your Shop and Server. Let’s start with the shop. If you have already set up a custom domain for your shop and configured it for your sales channels, you can skip this step and continue to step 2.

Domain name record Shop (CNAME)
Before you can configure the custom domain in the backoffice, you must create a CNAME for the Shop application on your own domain. The following steps are a general guide to achieve this. Because this configuration is outside the Paylogic system, we cannot assist you with it.

  1. Log in to your domain host (DNS provider).
  2. Go to the DNS settings of your domain.
  3. Create a new DNS record with these values:
  4. Name: the domain name you want to use, e.g. tickets.mydomain.com (note that you usually only need to enter the leftmost part of the domain name).
  5. Value: the following domain: shop.paylogic.com
  6. Type: CNAME
  7. TTL (Time to Live): 3600 (one hour) is the recommended value, but this is at your own discretion.
      4. Make sure you save and/or apply your changes.

2. Tracking Server with Custom Domain

Domain name record Server (CNAME)
Before you can configure the custom domain in the backoffice, you must create a CNAME for server-side tracking on your own domain. The following steps are a general guide to achieve this. Because this configuration is outside the Paylogic system, we cannot assist you with it.
  1. Log in to your domain host (DNS provider).
  2. Go to the DNS settings of your domain.
  3. Create a new DNS record with the following values:
    Name=: The domain name you want to use, for example pl.mydomain.com (usually you only need to enter the left part of the domain name – pl here stands for Paylogic). Important: Use the same main domain name for server-side tracking as for shops. So for example 'pl.event.com' for server-side tracking.
Alert
It is not advisable to use sst.mydomain.com here, as some ad blockers recognize this as server-side tracking.
4. Value: eub.stape.net
Type: CNAME
TTL (Time to Live): 3600 (one hour) is the recommended value, but this is at your own discretion.
      5. Make sure you save and/or apply your changes.

3. Backoffice configuration
After creating the CNAME(s), you can configure the custom domain in the Paylogic backoffice. Follow these steps to set it up.
  1. Go to the 'Custom Domains' menu under the Merchant settings.
  2. Click 'Add custom domain'.
  3. You will be redirected to a new screen where you can see and set the following fields:
    - Allowed merchants: This determines on which account you can use the custom domain. By default, the account you are in is used. Adding accounts can only be done by your client success manager.
    - Domain: Here you enter the fully qualified domain name of the site you want to use (for example sst.domain.com). You must specify the full subdomain and not just the main domain (so do not request with domain.com).
    - Type: Select 'Server-side tracking'.
  4. Status: This will always be 'New' and therefore cannot be changed.
  5. Once you have filled in everything, save the form.
  6. If you have also created a CNAME for the shop, repeat steps 3 and 4 for your shop domain.
  7. In the overview you will now see the custom domain you have requested. Our system will verify the domain with the configured CNAME. Once this check is completed and everything is correct, the status will change to 'Verified'. This normally happens within a day.
  8. Once a custom domain has been verified, it can be used for configuration in the channel. Go to 'Create > Sales channels' and select the channel in which you want to configure the custom domain.
  9. You can select a verified custom domain with the type 'Server-side tracking' for a shop in the setting 'Custom domain for server-side tracking' in the dropdown menu. And do the same for the shop domain.
  10. Click 'Save changes'.
  11. The custom domains are now applied to your sales channels.

4. Tracking tools
IdeaIf you also use server-side tracking on your own website, we recommend enabling server-side tracking for Google Analytics 4 as well in the Google Analytics 4 marketing tag. In addition, you can set up server-side tracking for Facebook and TikTok. For Facebook, follow the instructions in this article. And for TikTok, follow this article.

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