As of February 4th, Google announced that Google Tag Manager will now automatically collect a broader range of website events for Google Ads.

The goal: Making measurement easier, getting deeper insights, and requiring far less manual setup. The official documentation is extremely brief, only mentioning that advertisers might observe extra network requests to Google domains when these events are sent.

For smaller businesses, this update could be a real advantage:

• Less manual tagging
• Quicker implementation
• Additional data without complex setups

That said, full visibility and control over which data is collected, where it is sent, and how it aligns with privacy and compliance requirements remains essential.

That is one of the main reasons server-side tracking is such a powerful approach. It is the difference between being a passenger in your data strategy and being the driver.