Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

chromium.woolyss.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

621–630 of 902 posts

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#621

Post by pixeldetracking »

gigel82 wrote: post #82
tasha0663 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a fine suggestion. If it breaks the site, then I'd call that a broken website and move on. Maybe next time someone points me there, they'll have fixed their critical issue for users who block tracking proxies. I'm okay with not being in the target audience of sites that really want to do this. I've got enough other things to do at less hostile places that my FOMO isn't triggered in the least.

How do you identify tracking proxies though? When everything is going through the same domain you don't even know if data is being sent to Google, it's all a server-side black box.

ublock origin has actually an experimental option for this: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Static-filter-syntax#...

only issue with blocking the proxies is that you can now decide to host the container on your own infra through docker, and it's documented by Google: https://developers.google.com/tag-platform/tag-manager/serve...

I guess this is very interesting for many people, especially in Europe with the "Google Analytics ban"

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#622

Post by mtsr »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #595
mtsr wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think the solution here is a technical one. This should just be solved by legislation. Google Analytics has been recently ruled illegal in multiple European countries. And either this already is illegal under the same laws or it should be made so.

> Google Analytics has been recently ruled illegal in multiple European countries. Just about everything hosted by a non EU company just got ruled illegal (in the EU that is).

It's very doable to disable google analytics for EU visitors.

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#623

Post by pixeldetracking »

josephcsible wrote: post #203
Helmut10001 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IP blocking still seems a thing, even with this new feature - the ads need to be served from _somewhere_. I am using pfblocker-ng on pfsense, which uses giant IP blocklists to filter out all connections to spam and ad-servers. I haven't seen ads in 5 years and there is no need for client-side solutions (e.g. adblocker). The places where ads appear are just whitespace.

The idea is that this will be served from the same IP address that the site that you're trying to visit is.

yes, i updated the french article but not this translation (no idea who did the translation btw), Google has a guide to host the container on your own infra: https://developers.google.com/tag-platform/tag-manager/serve...

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#624

Post by kyrra »

sdoering wrote: post #244

Disclaimer: I am a data analyst. I consult companies in regards to ethical data collection. But I also know of black sheep. I don't have a problem with websites measuring what I view, click, add to cart or buy. I want them to be able to see what doesn't work in terms of user experience. And if they do marketing I even want them to be able to see from which source of traffic (aka marketing effort) how many conversions…

Btw, someone wrote up a guide on hosting this on AWS, which covers what it would take to run it yourself.

https://www.simoahava.com/analytics/deploy-server-side-googl...

If I'm not mistaken, the key bit is that Google makes the docker image available at: gcr.io/cloud-tagging-10302018/gtm-cloud-image:stable

Edit: oh, Google published a guide to self host maybe? https://developers.google.com/tag-platform/tag-manager/serve...

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#625

Post by pixeldetracking »

lmkg wrote: post #90
chrisseaton wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google tag manager in my experience is a script executed by the browser. Isn't the whole point of this new change that it runs server-side, using a proxy that you install on the website so it uses the same domain? > Regardless, I use a DNS based ad blocker But it's the same domain name isn't it?

A Server-Side GTM container compliments a client-side container, it does not fully replace it. Some processing happens on the server, but event data must still be sent to the server-side container first. For now, the "standard" deployment of a server-side is that it receives hits directly from the browser, orchestrated by a traditional client-side container. So the client-side script is still there, just less bloated…

and you can host the container: https://developers.google.com/tag-platform/tag-manager/serve...

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#626

Post by pixeldetracking »

romeoblade wrote: post #106
whalesalad wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google tag manager in my experience is a script executed by the browser. Then it installs itself in the page and performs the inner payload of user script insertions. It’s a Trojan horse, really. You can block Google tag manager’s embed scripts. I wasn’t aware of a backend integration but it’s certainly possible. Regardless, I use a DNS based ad blocker (pihole) and it takes care of all this stuff. I occasionally nee…

You missed the part where they recommend changing the script's name as well, add in changing a few variable/function names in the script and even matching the hash of the script itself would be useless. On top of them recommending using a sub domain with an A/AAAA record so its first party.

yes, french article is updated, but this english translation is quite old here it is: https://www.simoahava.com/analytics/custom-gtm-loader-server...

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#628

Post by pixeldetracking »

seandoe wrote: post #93
Saris wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just block the GTM js from loading, it'll stop it easily.

The big change they are suggesting is that the gtm code is no longer accessed via a predictable Google domain, rather it is requested through a subdomain of the parent site.

yes, custom names for loader: https://www.simoahava.com/analytics/custom-gtm-loader-server... and even hosted on your own infra: https://developers.google.com/tag-platform/tag-manager/serve...

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#629

Post by etempleton »

jacquesm wrote: post #269
sdoering wrote: post #244

Disclaimer: I am a data analyst. I consult companies in regards to ethical data collection. But I also know of black sheep. I don't have a problem with websites measuring what I view, click, add to cart or buy. I want them to be able to see what doesn't work in terms of user experience. And if they do marketing I even want them to be able to see from which source of traffic (aka marketing effort) how many conversions…

Marketing is almost by definition not going to act ethically: their whole goal is to create a need where there isn't an organic one, and the KPIs by which marketing departments are run are proof positive of that. Nobody starts off with 'what would be the natural limit of our product sales', instead they start off with 'what is the total addressable market and how do we maximize our fraction of that' implying that if…

Most people only see 1-2% of what a marketing department does. The primary goal of a marketing department is to inform and present information in a clear and attractive manner. A good marketing department is also an advocate for what the consumer wants based on research and consumer feedback.

Are there bad actors in marketing. Yes. A lot. Marketing agencies are full of them. Agencies, to generalize, only care about short-term results and selling the client on the next big idea. They won’t be around or have to live with the repurcuions of their bad actions. In fact, the clients are their customer and so they don’t really care about the client’s customers at all so long as the client is paying them. They just need superficial numbers to go up to show the client. They are screwing over the client and customers are unfortunately collateral damage, but the agencies, again, don’t really have to deal with that.

A lot of the most anti-consumer tactics do not work in the long-run. Most consumers aren’t so easily tricked into buying a product today and they most certainly won’t be tricked twice. It doesn’t take too long—usually—for the snake-oil salesman to get run out of town. They just do a lot of damage while around.

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#630

Post by pixeldetracking »

manigandham wrote: post #479

There is nothing new about this at all. Websites can collect data and forward it on the backend since the dawn of the internet. Google Analytics has an HTTP API [1] for sending events that's used by plenty of large sites. Consolidating event collection and forwarding to various sources is a large SaaS category with several billion-dollar companies, and one of the biggest success stories is Segment from YC [2]. In pas…

There is nothing new for the few experts out there (yes Segment has been doing it, yes others also, yes you can do it yourself). But Google proposes it, well, the adoption is not the same...

I agree with you on the legal doctrine

Post reply on HN