Event Generator tag

The Event Generator tag is a custom tag template for the Google Tag Manager (GTM) server container. It allows you to modify and re-run events within the same container execution (e.g., you can assign custom names for all of your events). Event Generator brings enhanced data transformation, cleaner logic, and more flexibility when building advanced server-side setups.

• Preparation: enrich event data before it reaches other tags.
• Customization and unification: change the event name to be used in triggers or analytics.
• Precision: use transformed variable data in other variables and/or triggers without triggering additional unwanted requests.

Please ensure that you already have a Google Tag Manager server container, as well as a configured server container and custom domain in Stape. Please follow these guides if you don’t have any of those:

• How to create a server container in Google Tag Manager
• How to create a server container in Stape
• How to add a custom domain in Stape

1. Configure sending data to the server GTM container. The two most popular options for sending data to sGTM are Google Analytics 4 and Data Tag/Data Client. Here is a step-by-step guide on sending data to sGTM.

2. Add the Event Generator tag in your server GTM container from the Template gallery:

• Search for Event Generator Tag by Stape in the Google Tag Manager Tag Template gallery.
• Click Add to workspace.

3. Create the Event Generator tag:

• Go to the Tags menu → click New.

• Click Tag Configuration → select Event Generator.

4. Configure the Event Generator tag:

• Configure the New Event Name. This is a required field. It sets up the name for the new enriched event. It's important not to use the same name as the event that triggers this tag to avoid infinite loops. For example, instead of conversion or purchase, use conversion_enriched or purchase_enriched instead.
• You can copy the existing Event Data from the original event by ticking the Copy Event Data checkbox. If enabled, the tag will copy all parameters from the original Event Data and merge them with any additional parameters specified.
• You can also add or overwrite any specific parameter by using the Additional Event Data Parameters section. If a parameter already exists in the current Event Data, its value will be replaced. Otherwise, a new parameter shall be added. You can use your own custom variables here to enrich the event with the data you get from elsewhere and store as variables.
• Advanced Settings include settings for Additional Tag Metadata, which allows you to specify additional tag metadata to be included in the event data when a tag is fired.

5. Add the Trigger for the tag (it should trigger on the event you'd like to be replaced), give it a descriptive name, and click Save.

When you are using Google Analytics 4 Advanced Consent Mode together with server-side sGTM, you need to configure an additional trigger to ensure the data is collected correctly.

It works the following way:

• When a user initially denies consent, events are still collected, but with restricted data.
• If the user later grants consent, GA4 automatically redispatches those earlier events. These redispatched events include an x-ga-gcu parameter.

However, in sGTM, only Google-related tags (GA4, Google Ads, Floodlight, Conversion Linker) are executed. All other tags (including the Event Generator) are suppressed.

Since the Event Generator does not run on redispatched events, the enrichment logic is skipped, event data is not modified as expected, and downstream tags that rely on enriched data may receive incomplete data.

You can fix this problem by configuring triggers so that downstream tags can still fire for these consent-update events.

Firstly, you need to create a variable or x-ga-gcu. Use the following configurations for a variable:

• Variable type: Event Data
• Key path: x-ga-gcu

Select the case that works for you and follow the instructions below:

You can test the configurations in Google Tag Manager. Click on Preview, trigger the event, and check whether the tag has fired.

Find out more about debugging and monitoring server-side tracking configuration in our guide.