Server-side Google Ads tags not sending HTTP requests from server — on

Google Tag Manager Server Container
1

We are seeing two different behaviors for our Google Ads tags in sGTM:

1. Google Ads Conversion Tracking

The tag fires successfully in sGTM preview — firing status shows “Succeeded”. However, no outgoing HTTP request from the server is visible.

2. Google Ads Remarketing

The remarketing tag also shows firing status “Succeeded” in sGTM preview, but we see no outgoing HTTP request at all — neither from the server nor from the browser.

Setup

  • Shopify storefront
  • DataLayer pushed via the Stape Shopify app
  • Google Tag Manager (web container) → server-side
  • GTM container via Stape GA4 as data source for sGTM
  • Two Google Ads tag types configured in sGTM: Google Ads Conversion Tracking and Google Ads Remarketing

What I have checked:

  • Conversion ID and label are correct
  • Consent status is gcs=G111 (full consent granted)
  • Tag trigger matches the incoming GA4 event (add_to_cart)
  • Both tags show “Succeeded” in sGTM preview — so they are firing, but not producing the expected server-side HTTP requests

Questions:

  1. The Google Ads Remarketing tag shows “Succeeded” in sGTM preview but produces no outgoing HTTP request at all — not from the server, not from the browser. What could cause a tag to show “Succeeded” without any actual request being sent?

  2. The Google Ads Conversion Tracking tag also shows “Succeeded” but the request is sent from the browser instead of the server. What is the issue here?

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2

The reason may be that the event does not have the necessary parameters in the event data to send request to Google Ads from server.

Please ensure that you are sending all the necessary parameters for the event with GA4 events to server.
You can find more information here: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/ga4/reference/events?sjid=4941253201198869014-EU&client_type=gtag#add_to_cart

You can also show us how the tags are configured; this will give us a better understanding of what might be wrong.

3

Hi @Dmytro thank you so much for your quick reply.

About the conversion tags:

A call is being sent to Google Ads, but not via the server. This is despite the fact that I have no Google Ads tags firing from the client-side GTM container.

Could this possibly be related to sendPixelFromBrowser? And if so, does that mean this is actually expected behavior?

The strange thing is that I see no request at all for the remarketing tag, not from the server, not from the browser. (See other comment.)

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About the remarketing tag, see my other reply (since I cannot upload 2 images).

4

About the Remarketing tag:

  • No server call
  • No browser call

Setup:

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5

I looked into the issue in more detail and checked my setup aswell.

Google Tag Manager Server-Side does not always send conversions to Google Ads via a ‘visible HTTP request’.
Sometimes it is:
an internal Google API call
an abstracted request layer

this is simply a limitation of the preview interface

Therefore, this behaviour is expected, and you can check whether conversions are working in your Google Ads account after publication. The next day, they should already have active status if everything is configured correctly.