Meeting Title: GA4 and SGTM Configuration Discussion Date: 2025-09-23 Meeting participants: Robert Tseng, Zoran Selinger
WEBVTT
1 00:00:24.850 ⇒ 00:00:25.740 Zoran Selinger: Hi, Robert.
2 00:00:27.160 ⇒ 00:00:28.220 Robert Tseng: is on.
3 00:00:31.290 ⇒ 00:00:32.220 Robert Tseng: Can you hear me?
4 00:00:32.430 ⇒ 00:00:34.089 Zoran Selinger: Yep, I can. Okay.
5 00:00:36.670 ⇒ 00:00:38.719 Zoran Selinger: Yes, I was just reading…
6 00:00:39.700 ⇒ 00:00:40.590 Zoran Selinger: your message?
7 00:00:40.590 ⇒ 00:00:51.249 Robert Tseng: Yeah, thanks for jump… thanks for jumping on with such short notice. I just got the email from her, so 5 minutes ago, so, yeah, maybe it would just take a minute to just read through it. I haven’t fully, like.
8 00:00:51.390 ⇒ 00:00:52.580 Robert Tseng: pick it apart.
9 00:00:53.920 ⇒ 00:00:54.540 Zoran Selinger: Sure.
10 00:00:54.790 ⇒ 00:00:59.480 Robert Tseng: Yeah, and then when you’re done, just let me know, I’ll give you some additional context on, like, where we’re at.
11 00:01:02.110 ⇒ 00:01:11.440 Zoran Selinger: in order to use GF4 effectively, we would need that SGTM to do so. Yeah, it looks like…
12 00:01:12.070 ⇒ 00:01:16.169 Zoran Selinger: We need… we need to have
13 00:01:16.760 ⇒ 00:01:27.580 Zoran Selinger: at least basic GA4 configuration in place, so it just won’t work with us just importing data from
14 00:01:27.810 ⇒ 00:01:38.209 Zoran Selinger: from Amplitude. There’s simply… there’s no, like, proper session data or anything like that, and even… even…
15 00:01:38.700 ⇒ 00:01:42.629 Zoran Selinger: simulating that is… I’ve never seen it done.
16 00:01:42.890 ⇒ 00:01:57.059 Zoran Selinger: First of all, it’s just, even if we can do that, I think that would be, an overkill for a tool that is, you know, a nice-to-have, not really a necessity.
17 00:01:58.090 ⇒ 00:02:09.790 Zoran Selinger: So, yes, in order to have GA4, we would need to fire at least a page view event.
18 00:02:10.000 ⇒ 00:02:16.319 Zoran Selinger: So that can happen. So, in server… server-side GTM,
19 00:02:16.910 ⇒ 00:02:33.739 Zoran Selinger: we can fire events just from the server, we don’t have to have any third-party calls. Even… we can go even a step further with SGTM, and that is, those, like, pixel libraries. We can load it from our own
20 00:02:34.620 ⇒ 00:02:35.630 Zoran Selinger: website.
21 00:02:36.760 ⇒ 00:02:42.130 Zoran Selinger: Right? Even those do not have to be loaded. Like, analytics.js that you grab.
22 00:02:42.770 ⇒ 00:02:55.100 Zoran Selinger: for all this functionality, for GA Pixel, we can actually grab it for our own domain. So, there is no… there are no third-party calls happening anywhere.
23 00:02:55.260 ⇒ 00:02:58.500 Zoran Selinger: So that is possible to do.
24 00:02:59.820 ⇒ 00:03:05.100 Zoran Selinger: There’s a, there’s a tag in SGTM for it.
25 00:03:09.240 ⇒ 00:03:13.279 Zoran Selinger: But later, right, she says…
26 00:03:14.480 ⇒ 00:03:20.989 Zoran Selinger: before the end of the year is to remove all of the pixels and Google tags from the website.
27 00:03:24.460 ⇒ 00:03:35.979 Zoran Selinger: So I’m just thinking what that means exactly. That basically means we are not loading anything in the client, at least
28 00:03:36.800 ⇒ 00:03:42.519 Zoran Selinger: not from… the Pixel or, you know, anything GTM.
29 00:03:42.650 ⇒ 00:03:49.960 Zoran Selinger: We would need to, if we need any client tracking, We would need to…
30 00:03:50.890 ⇒ 00:03:54.970 Zoran Selinger: embedded directly on the site, right? In the site’s code.
31 00:03:56.090 ⇒ 00:04:00.320 Zoran Selinger: Am I right? Is there any way? Any other way to do it?
32 00:04:01.360 ⇒ 00:04:05.480 Robert Tseng: even the custom, like, Cloudflare thing doesn’t count as…
33 00:04:06.060 ⇒ 00:04:10.609 Robert Tseng: I mean, you would still need one pixel in order to do it, because you’d be routing everything through it.
34 00:04:15.080 ⇒ 00:04:18.900 Zoran Selinger: I want… so if we do… if we do,
35 00:04:20.779 ⇒ 00:04:25.310 Zoran Selinger: So I wonder if we can just… if we can do… like, normal…
36 00:04:25.870 ⇒ 00:04:29.810 Zoran Selinger: like, HTTP requests directly to the server-side GTM.
37 00:04:29.950 ⇒ 00:04:30.760 Zoran Selinger: Right.
38 00:04:30.990 ⇒ 00:04:31.630 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
39 00:04:31.630 ⇒ 00:04:39.720 Zoran Selinger: without the client-side implementation. Even though the client-side implementation, I mean, it does…
40 00:04:39.880 ⇒ 00:04:54.100 Zoran Selinger: it just transfers the data from one place to another for the… from the client to the server side. If you can’t even have that, I mean, we might… we can maybe do that,
41 00:04:55.000 ⇒ 00:05:12.700 Zoran Selinger: with a call, anyway, without loading… but still, we are loading some func… we are embedding now some functionality of, you know, pixels and… and that. We’re still implementing it. So, if you want to remove all pixels and tags.
42 00:05:12.920 ⇒ 00:05:18.309 Zoran Selinger: That just means you don’t… You don’t want to rely on any kind.
43 00:05:18.310 ⇒ 00:05:19.590 Robert Tseng: Nothing quiet, yeah.
44 00:05:19.590 ⇒ 00:05:20.810 Zoran Selinger: Nothing client.
45 00:05:21.780 ⇒ 00:05:26.129 Zoran Selinger: I think let’s confirm that that’s exactly what you meant.
46 00:05:26.540 ⇒ 00:05:32.350 Zoran Selinger: Because I think that’s a… that’s a… that’s a big… obvious… a big restriction.
47 00:05:32.760 ⇒ 00:05:34.440 Zoran Selinger: Is that what she meant?
48 00:05:34.950 ⇒ 00:05:35.640 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
49 00:05:35.640 ⇒ 00:05:36.809 Zoran Selinger: Let’s confirm that.
50 00:05:41.930 ⇒ 00:05:59.359 Robert Tseng: Yeah, the other half of it, of, like, the amplitude stuff, I can answer that question, so there’s no problem there. I just, like, I feel like the more questions you ask, the more confused I’m at, because I’m like, well, didn’t we say we configure GA4 properly, we get SGTM to send GA4 events, that’s the short-term solution.
51 00:05:59.360 ⇒ 00:06:04.630 Robert Tseng: Then she’s like, okay, we can do that, but I want to take out all the pixels at the end. Well, it’s like…
52 00:06:04.630 ⇒ 00:06:15.179 Robert Tseng: Okay, well then, is that the Cloud Functions… does the Cloud Function solution that we suggested count for that, then? Because… but that only works specifically for Google Ads, right? So…
53 00:06:15.810 ⇒ 00:06:17.339 Zoran Selinger: As for Google Ads, yes.
54 00:06:17.560 ⇒ 00:06:22.589 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so it’s like, I don’t know if she’s gonna get the best of what she wants,
55 00:06:22.760 ⇒ 00:06:31.479 Robert Tseng: like, it just seems like she’s… well, I’ll get clarification, but it does seem like she’s pushing towards a future where there’s nothing kind of being captured client-side, so…
56 00:06:31.600 ⇒ 00:06:34.959 Robert Tseng: We just have to be upfront with, okay, well, if that’s the case…
57 00:06:35.600 ⇒ 00:06:44.299 Robert Tseng: Maybe the Cloud Function solution will work for Google Ads, but then we’re just not going to be able to have any client events that we can send to other ad platforms.
58 00:06:47.390 ⇒ 00:06:51.269 Zoran Selinger: Yeah, if we don’t do something similar for those other platforms, right?
59 00:06:51.270 ⇒ 00:06:51.950 Robert Tseng: cash.
60 00:06:53.120 ⇒ 00:07:07.349 Robert Tseng: Then she’ll be like, okay, well, then you need to give me, like, a budget or a quote on, like, what it is to build other custom solutions for those other platforms as well. Because, like, obviously we would have to build multiple vans, because what I’m quoting her is just a one-time
61 00:07:08.290 ⇒ 00:07:09.450 Robert Tseng: But, but, just…
62 00:07:09.450 ⇒ 00:07:13.650 Zoran Selinger: can’t be, what we do, right?
63 00:07:13.650 ⇒ 00:07:14.110 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
64 00:07:14.110 ⇒ 00:07:27.550 Zoran Selinger: No one does that, so there’s a reason why no one does that. No one’s as restrictive as that. So, I mean, we rely on amplitude there, so we need, I mean, we need some,
65 00:07:29.010 ⇒ 00:07:30.789 Zoran Selinger: We need client-side stuff.
66 00:07:31.150 ⇒ 00:07:33.000 Zoran Selinger: that… Of course.
67 00:07:33.290 ⇒ 00:07:33.900 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
68 00:07:33.900 ⇒ 00:07:35.809 Zoran Selinger: So if we can have one…
69 00:07:36.950 ⇒ 00:07:39.679 Zoran Selinger: Why not have the other as well?
70 00:07:39.910 ⇒ 00:07:44.339 Zoran Selinger: And where’s that… where’s the difference? Wow.
71 00:07:45.060 ⇒ 00:07:54.079 Robert Tseng: I’m gonna ask her the question. I’m also gonna make a couple calls. I’m gonna call another friend who does exclusively healthcare clients, just to see, like, what she does.
72 00:07:54.410 ⇒ 00:07:57.450 Robert Tseng: with this, like, I don’t know if she’s run into this specific situation.
73 00:07:57.450 ⇒ 00:07:58.560 Zoran Selinger: to suggest that.
74 00:07:58.560 ⇒ 00:08:13.509 Robert Tseng: Yeah, and then I’m gonna… and then I’m gonna call my contact in Amplitude, and I’m gonna be like, please put me in contact with somebody who manages, like, a healthcare account. Like, what are we… why are we… why are we running into so many walls with this? So, okay, that’s what I’m gonna do.
75 00:08:14.050 ⇒ 00:08:15.570 Robert Tseng: Okay.
76 00:08:15.810 ⇒ 00:08:16.809 Robert Tseng: That sounds great.
77 00:08:17.020 ⇒ 00:08:21.450 Robert Tseng: Yeah, go somewhere. Inconclusive, but, you know, we have next, next step. Appreciate it.
78 00:08:22.170 ⇒ 00:08:23.100 Robert Tseng: Yeah. Okay.
79 00:08:23.100 ⇒ 00:08:25.550 Zoran Selinger: Okay, okay, cool, I’m here if you need anything.
80 00:08:25.550 ⇒ 00:08:26.220 Robert Tseng: Thanks.
81 00:08:26.220 ⇒ 00:08:27.839 Zoran Selinger: Alright, bye. Bye.