User_data and Google Ads Remarketing

[ducnguyen.kirby]

I have been using Data Client for facebook and pinterest server tagging. However, for Google Ads and Google Analytics, I have been stuck with GA4 client. I notice that if I specific user_data on the client side of GTM, the Data Client will actually get it on the server side. I could not find the user_data field through GTM preview for GA4 client. I have been trying to use hashed email_address as user_id. Do you guys use Data Client or GA4 client for Google Ads tag?

Additionally, Google Ads Remarketing on the server side has been failing. There is no out going requests, and the console says my remarketing events should have been conversions. Has Google Ads Remarketing Tag for Serverside work for anyone? My conversion tag works just fine.

[Alex]

I would recommend using GA4 for all google platforms. Since there is no source code of google tags, it is impossible to know exactly what parameters are used in tagging operation. So for all google platforms it is better to use GA4 hits, and for all non google platforms it is possible and better to use Data Client.

[ducnguyen.kirby]

Yes. I’m using GA4 for all Google Platforms, but when I passed in User Data to GA4 only (as a User Defined Variable in GTM,) it’s not showing up in eventData on server side. Data Client, for some reasons, is actually catching it.

[Alex]

There aren’t any restrictions on this so it’s some local configuration error of yours. GA4 receives user data in event data fine, I haven’t encountered any problems with it.
Try experimenting with this. And by the way, don’t send it in the user data section of the tag, send it in the event parameters - maybe that’s your problem.

[ducnguyen.kirby]

I will try that and see what I can get. However, to anyone having the same problems at me, here’s my setup.

Data Tag Client Side:

GA4 Client Tag Set up:

Data Client’s eventData serverside (notice how street is repeated as a normal parameter, with another one in userData)

GA4 Client for the same event has no parameters related to userData.

[ducnguyen.kirby]

I manually set to send user_data as custom parameters for GA4 client. Unfortunately, I still don’t see user_data showing up in eventData However, I do notice user_data_mode is set to “c.”

[Alessandro_Salerno]

Hello, I’m also working on “User Data”. This is how I’m implementing it:

1. From the “GTM Client”, I send the data in unhashed string format as event parameters “user_data.my_data”. (Google Tag: first_party_collection = true)
2. In the “GTM Server”, I hash them, one by one, using Simo Ahava’s Hash 256 tag.
3. In the “GTM Server”, I pass the hashed data to the Facebook
4. According to Google’s documentation, the Google Tag automatically handles the hashing of user data.

Is this process correct?

However, I can’t find Facebook documentation on which data should be passed encrypted (email, gender, etc.) and which should not.

The Google Ads Remarketing Tag is working and sending parameters; however, when I go to the Data Sources section in the Google Ads console, I see the parameters but not in the ‘Retail’ section

For the correct nomenclature of user_data, perhaps this link might be useful:

Common event data  |  Google Tag Manager - Server-side...

Thanks

[Alex]

Hashing the data separately is usually not necessary, the tags themselves hash the data before sending it. This applies to Google ADS and Meta tags as well.

Meta documentation can be found here: Paramètres - API Conversions - Documentation - Meta for Developers

[liudmyla.kharchenko]

For accurate Google Ads remarketing, your Google Ads Tag must be set up correctly. Learn more here: Server-side conversion tracking in Google Ads (Adwords) - Stape