Case study: Hide and Seek agency boosts ad tracking with Stape’s services

Hide and Seek, one of the top Stape’s partners, is a leading online marketing agency based in the Netherlands. They focus on reaching the right audience with a relevant message.

At Hide and Seek, growth is at the heart of everything they do. Their services are designed to align perfectly with businesses’ goals, covering everything from online advertising campaigns, to SEO, to Content and to Data & Tracking.

Problem: lacking data on ad campaigns

The core of Hide and Seek is online advertising on various platforms for their clients. Reliable data, which is not affected by ad blockers, browser restrictions (e.g., ITP from Safari), and data regulations (such as GDPR), is the key to making the right decisions and achieving reasonable budget allocation.

The agency's main challenge was the increasing data loss in both Google Analytics 4 and advertising platforms like Meta, preventing campaigns from performing as effectively as they did before GDPR and other restrictions.

Another aspect of the problem was reporting - the gap between actual performance and the dashboard was growing. As a result, collecting accurate insights on ad campaign performance and optimizing them became increasingly challenging.

Solution: server-side tracking and Meta Conversions API implementation

In their search for a reliable solution to fill the gap in the data collected, Hide and Seek concluded that server-side tracking and Meta Conversions API best fit their needs.

What Hide and Seek loves the most about Google Tag Manager server-side tracking and Facebook Conversions API solutions is the high customization. 

In their work with clients, Hide and Seek combined different templates from Facebook and Stape for web and server containers (such as Data Client, Facebook CAPI templates), which allowed them to optimize the processes. As a result of optimization efforts, they could set up a server GTM container with Meta CAPI integration within a couple of hours.

Among the most frequently used Stape power-ups are the following:

• Custom GTM and GA4 Loader - without this power-up, the data can still be exposed to ad blockers and other restrictions that impact data quality.

• Cookie Keeper - that’s a lifesaver and one of the main unique selling points to pitch Stape for agency clients. With its help, you can extend cookies’ lifetime to any desired number of days, depending on the platform.
• Multi Domains - a helpful power-up used for large clients with multiple websites, requiring a centralized solution to manage data tracking. One of such clients is Superstruct, whose challenges and solutions we explore in a separate case study.

Another feature that became essential for the agency’s clients is Stape Analytics. People have always asked about the impact of Stape’s server-side tracking on the data collection. Without the analytics dashboard, estimating how much data was saved was difficult. Seasonal or market changes could explain the increase in conversions, but with Stape’s feature the clients can see the results of server-side tracking.

Results

After implementing Facebook Conversions API for the clients, they could observe improvement in data collection by 15-30% in Event Manager. Stape’s Analytics feature also showcases the effectiveness of such a switch. 

Hide and Seek’s clients admit that they have gained more control over the data they collect and become less affected by any arising restrictions.

Conclusion

Server-side tracking and Facebook Conversions API for Hide and Seek became an effective solution to collect data more precisely and optimize the client’s campaigns accordingly. Stape’s services covered the agency's problem - data loss due to browser restrictions, ad blockers, and data regulations. Both solutions proved to be beneficial for making data-driven decisions despite the growing challenges in data tracking.

Big thanks to Erik Theelen for his help in creating this case study.