Glossary
Server-side tracking, identity resolution, conversion APIs, consent management, and marketing analytics terms — defined clearly.
B
Bounce Rate
The percentage of visitors who land on a page and leave the site without taking any additional action or navigating to a second page.
C
Click ID
A unique identifier appended to a URL by an advertising platform when a user clicks an ad, used to match the click to a downstream conversion for accurate attribution reporting.
Client-Side Tracking
A data collection method where tracking scripts run directly in the user's browser, capturing interactions and sending them to analytics and advertising platforms via JavaScript tags.
Consent Management Platform (CMP)
Software that collects, stores, and enforces user consent preferences for data collection and cookies, helping websites comply with privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA.
Conversion API
A server-to-server interface provided by advertising platforms that allows businesses to send conversion events directly from their server to the ad network, bypassing the browser entirely.
Conversion Rate
The percentage of visitors who complete a desired action — such as making a purchase, submitting a form, or signing up — out of the total number of visitors to a page or site.
Conversion Tracking
The process of measuring when users complete a desired action — such as a purchase, form submission, or sign-up — and connecting that action back to the marketing touchpoints that drove it.
Cross-Device Tracking
The practice of identifying and tracking a single user's behavior across multiple devices — such as smartphones, tablets, and desktops — to build a unified view of their journey.
Customer Data Platform (CDP)
A software system that collects, unifies, and organizes customer data from multiple sources into persistent individual profiles, making that data accessible to other marketing and analytics tools.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
The total revenue a business can expect from a single customer account over the entire duration of their relationship, used to guide acquisition spending and retention strategy.
D
Data Enrichment
The process of augmenting raw collected data with additional context — such as geographic location, device details, or campaign metadata — to make it more complete, accurate, and useful for analytics and marketing decisions.
Data Layer
A structured JavaScript object that acts as a centralized repository for passing data between a website and its tracking tags, ensuring consistent and reliable information flows to analytics and marketing platforms.
Data Quality
A measure of how accurate, complete, consistent, and timely collected data is — determining whether marketing and analytics teams can trust their data to make reliable decisions.
E
Event Tracking
The practice of recording specific user interactions — such as clicks, form submissions, video plays, and purchases — as discrete, structured data points that can be analyzed to understand behavior and measure marketing performance.
F
Facebook Conversions API (CAPI)
Meta's server-to-server interface that lets advertisers send web, app, and offline conversion events directly from their server to Meta, bypassing the browser and improving data reliability for ad optimization.
First-Party Cookies
Small text files set by the domain the user is currently visiting, used to remember preferences, maintain login sessions, and track behavior within that site.
First-Party Data
Data collected directly from your own audience through interactions with your website, app, or other owned channels, considered the most reliable and privacy-compliant category of marketing data.
I
Identity Resolution
The process of matching and merging multiple identifiers — such as device IDs, email addresses, cookies, and login events — into a single, unified user profile.
Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP)
A privacy feature built into Apple's Safari browser that limits cross-site tracking by restricting cookie lifespans, blocking third-party cookies, and isolating website data.
L
Last-Click Attribution
An attribution model that assigns 100% of conversion credit to the final marketing touchpoint a user interacted with before converting, ignoring all prior interactions in the customer journey.
M
Marketing Attribution
The practice of identifying which marketing channels, campaigns, and touchpoints contribute to a conversion, enabling marketers to understand what drives results and allocate budget effectively.
Multi-Touch Attribution
An attribution methodology that distributes conversion credit across multiple marketing touchpoints in a customer's journey, rather than assigning all credit to a single interaction.
R
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
A marketing metric that measures the revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising, calculated by dividing campaign revenue by campaign cost.
S
Server-Side GTM
Google's server-side container for Google Tag Manager, which runs tag logic on a cloud server instead of in the browser, improving data control and reducing client-side performance impact.
Server-Side Tagging
The practice of executing marketing and analytics tags on a server instead of in the browser, giving organizations full control over what data is collected and where it is sent.
Server-Side Tracking
A data collection method where tracking events are processed on a server rather than in the user's browser, improving data accuracy, security, and resilience to ad blockers.
T
Tag Management System
Software that provides a centralized interface for deploying, organizing, and controlling marketing and analytics tags on a website without requiring code changes for each update.
Third-Party Cookies
Cookies set by a domain other than the one the user is currently visiting, traditionally used for cross-site advertising, retargeting, and behavioral tracking.
Third-Party Data
Data collected by organizations that have no direct relationship with the user, typically aggregated across multiple websites and apps, then sold or shared for advertising and analytics purposes.
U
UTM Parameters
Standardized URL query parameters (utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_term, utm_content) appended to links to identify the traffic source, medium, and campaign that drove a visitor to a website.
Ready to ship server-side tracking?
Get Ingest Labs running with your marketing stack in under a day.