Dolphin Analytics audits, fixes and rebuilds marketing tracking for digital agencies and in-house teams: GA4, Google Tag Manager, server-side tracking, consent set-up and the pixels that feed your ad platforms. When platforms disagree or conversions look wrong, the tracking layer is usually the cause. We find the fault, fix it and prove the fix against your source data.
Axon Garside 
connective3 
AKQA 
WPP 
Omnicom 
Toyota 
Volvo 
Cedar 
Preqin 
Mediahub 
Tesco 
Heidi 
ElevateJet 
Illumicrate 
Octopus EV 
Noisy Beast 
Incisive Media 
Boltahead 
Robot Zebra 
Pixated 
Passionfruit 
Ada Ventures The same data problems come up for almost every marketing team we meet, agency-side or in-house. They usually sound like this.
GA4 says one thing, Meta Ads says another and Shopify says a third. Nobody can explain the gaps, so nobody fully trusts any of the numbers.
The board wants to know what marketing returned. The dashboards claim plenty, the bank account says less, and there's no defensible number in between.
Without analytics we can lean on, we're not winning the pitch, keeping the clients we've got, or upselling the ones who stay. Good data is how an agency proves its worth.
If any of these sound like your week, talk to us: send a message, or book a call straight away.
The concrete work behind the pillar, in plain terms.
We go through your GA4, Tag Manager and pixel setup and tell you exactly what's broken, what it's costing you and what the fix involves. Findings you can act on, whoever does the fixing.
Broken events, double counting, half-migrated containers. We repair what's there or rebuild it properly, and prove the fix against your source data.
When ad spend justifies it, we set up server-side tagging and migrate your tags across, so consent banners and ad blockers stop eating your conversion signal.
Consent Mode v2 configured so you stay compliant without losing more data than you have to. Compliant tracking and accurate tracking are the same job done properly.
Each platform measures with its own attribution model, window and consent handling, so GA4, Meta Ads and Google Ads will never agree to the penny. Small gaps are normal. A large gap that persists usually means a tracking fault rather than a reporting quirk.
The platforms aren't lying; they're answering different questions. Meta counts conversions it influenced inside its own attribution window, Google Ads does the same inside another, GA4 applies a different model again, and Consent Mode decides which visitors any of them are allowed to see at all. Layer a tag error or a missing UTM on top and the numbers drift from "different by design" into "actually wrong". An audit's job is telling those two apart.
Shopify · the till
£13,920
GA4 · the camera
£12,480
Gap accounted for · both numbers trusted
Shopify is the till and GA4 is the camera: trust Shopify for money and GA4 for behaviour. Refunds, consent-blocked sessions, checkout tracking gaps and timezone settings all open a gap between the two. Most of it closes once the checkout tracking and consent set-up are done properly.
The gap matters because everything downstream inherits it. Attribution, ROAS, email revenue claims: all of them lean on the same tracking layer, so a checkout fault quietly skews every report built on top.
Four symptoms you can check today: unassigned traffic climbing in GA4, sudden spikes in direct traffic, conversions that don't match the ad platform or the store, and numbers that went flat or jumped after a site change. Any one of them is grounds for an audit.
Tracking faults rarely announce themselves. They show up as slow drift, a quiet rise in "direct" sessions, a dataLayer that stopped firing on one template after a redesign. Recent work in this pillar: for a private aviation client, Dolphin Analytics mapped the enquiry-to-deal dataflow across three web domains and a HubSpot CRM, end to end, so every enquiry source finally became visible.
Server-side tagging moves your marketing tags out of the visitor's browser and onto a server you control. The browser sends one request to your own Google Tag Manager server container, and that container decides what gets forwarded on to GA4, Google Ads and Meta. Same events, same platforms, but the data leaves from your server instead of from every third-party script on the page.
Client-side tagging asks the browser to do all of it: load each platform's script, collect the data, post it out. That is the part ad blockers, browser tracking prevention and short cookie lifetimes keep chipping away at. Server-side tagging leaves one lightweight request in the page and does the rest where none of that applies, so the signal your ad platforms need holds up better.
The honest answer on cost: a server container is live infrastructure. It bills every month, it needs a subdomain on your own domain, and someone has to own it once the launch is done. On a small site with light ad spend, that overhead outweighs the signal you get back. Where spend is heavy and consent or ad-blocker loss already shows in your own reports, it usually pays for itself.
Dolphin Analytics runs server-side tagging as a scoped engagement. We check whether it pays first, then set up the server container and the subdomain, migrate your GA4, Google Ads and Meta Conversions API tags across, and prove every event against source data before the old client-side tags come off. Agencies use us white-label inside their own client accounts.
Server-side tracking routes your marketing data through a server you control, using server-side GTM and the Meta Conversions API, instead of relying on the browser alone. It helps most where ad spend is high and consent or ad-blocker losses are heavy. Plenty of setups don't need it yet.
Honest scoping matters here. If the basics are broken, server-side tracking moves broken data through a more expensive pipe; fix the foundation first and add server-side where the recovered signal pays for the work.
Five usual suspects. Consent misconfiguration (Consent Mode v2 set up wrong, or not at all). Google Tag Manager errors: orphaned triggers, duplicate tags, half-migrated containers. Checkout or platform migrations that drop the dataLayer. Signal loss from iOS App Tracking Transparency and ad blockers. And missing or inconsistent UTM tagging, which sends paid traffic into the "direct" bucket where nobody can claim it.
Consent Mode v2
Consent misconfig
we fix this
orphaned triggers
GTM errors
we fix this
lost dataLayer
Migration drops
we fix this
signal loss
iOS & ad-blockers
we fix this
unclaimed traffic
UTM gaps
we fix this
Compliant and accurate · the same job done properly
Compliant tracking and accurate tracking are the same job done properly. Consent set-up decides what your tags may collect, so getting GDPR and PECR right is also how the numbers stay trustworthy.
Compliance is the supporting pillar under Tracking: GDPR and cookie audits, consent set-up and GRC. The stakes are real. Our compliance work helped a client avoid exposure to a potential GDPR fine of up to €20M, and the same fix helped the agency protect a six-figure client retainer.
Agencies and in-house teams we plug into as their analytics bench, on what it's like to have us on the team.
Partnering with Dolphin Analytics resonates with us because it gives us extra capacity with heavily fluctuating demand in this current climate around new tracking implementation technologies. It's the offering of dealing with experts with a no-fuss approach. They're so valuable, solving our biggest pain points by providing on-demand expertise. In any agency setting there is always a lack of capacity for niche skilled expertise, and Dolphin Analytics provides that.
Alan Ng Chief Innovation Officer, Connective3 Marketing agency, 150 people Working with Dolphin Analytics has been a pleasure. Olam and his team were brought on to help us work through client issues outside our usual area of operations. Their team worked seamlessly alongside Axon Garside for our clients. They led the project, identifying the solution swiftly, before developing the fix and completing the jobs rapidly. Dolphin Analytics' communication was great throughout, keeping my team updated. This is the beginning of a fruitful business relationship between both businesses.
Spencer Montagu Marketing Director, Axon Garside B2B marketing agency, 20 people Olam and his team joined us when our product analytics was still in its infancy. Within weeks they'd resolved a host of issues with our Heap events and reports, giving us a much clearer picture of how customers used the platform. They then helped our product and UX team embed a framework for experimentation, so we could validate ideas and deliver value far more quickly: a real step change in how we build products. Olam is a genuine people person, and his collaborative approach was hugely appreciated. I extended the engagement numerous times and am hugely grateful for the change he helped enact.
Jack Levy Head of Product, Preqin In-house product team Data can be complex and, more often, it is made unnecessarily so by the people within it. However, Dolphin Analytics' skill is in understanding what's possible, what's necessary, and making that easily understood and implemented. It's rare to have such consistently good and reliable data expertise, but Dolphin Analytics always delivers.
Dino Myers-Lamptey Managing Director, Mediahub Marketing agency, 500 people Dolphin Analytics joined our team and quickly became a valuable asset that we wanted to extend onto other projects. They are able to think critically, stay solutions-oriented, and know how to work with others, bringing their expertise and point of view on data and analytics. Beyond the technical skill across various analytics tools, they have broad experience with different types of analysis, which makes them able to step up to different challenges.
Payam Cherchian Data & Analytics Director, AKQA (now EssenceMediacom) Web & design agency, 40 people We turned to Dolphin Analytics when we had a data project we needed specialist input on. The team took time to understand our challenges, ambition and the nuances of our business to propose a bespoke solution. They broke down complex processes in a way we could communicate across our teams and clients to build into our roadmap.
Joseph Costello Global Strategy & Insights Director, Cedar Swipe / scroll → 1 / 6
Dolphin Analytics has helped an agency avoid exposure to a potential GDPR fine of up to €20M, saved a media agency 20 hours a week on reporting, and shown brands which of their ad numbers reflect reality.
Connective3 · Performance agency
20+ projects
delivered · 5 clients
Tracking, visualisation and insight delivered across their client roster, helping keep retainers worth multiple six figures combined.
How: embedded team · tracking fixes · Piano Analytics · dashboards
Toyota · via AKQA
3x conversion rate
after the repaired journey
People were dropping out through hidden gaps in the journey. The work found the weak points, closed them with experiments, and kept more of the same traffic moving to the end.
How: insight · conversion funnel repair · experimentation
ElevateJet · Private aviation
<3 months
from zero to 8 channels wired
Tracking, CRM attribution, BigQuery and Looker dashboards from a standing start; their agency's performance finally provable, and a new partner onboarded on the evidence.
How: 3 sites → HubSpot · BigQuery + Looker · new-agency onboarding
Illumicrate · with Noisy Beast
5x ROAS
Confirmed against Shopify sales
We implemented a new tracking infrastructure and analysed performance across channels. The work confirmed Meta was profitable, giving the team confidence to increase spend and use better measurement to grow the waitlist.
How: full tracking setup · cross-channel analysis · profitable Meta spend confirmed
Heidi · Ski travel
2 weeks
From zero to launch-ready dashboards
Looker Studio built from scratch for a team with no data resource, ready in two weeks to run Black Friday on live numbers and see what to promote.
How: Looker Studio from scratch · launch support · no internal resource needed
Sonar scans your site from the outside and reports what tracking is actually running, plus the problems it can prove. If you suspect your tracking is lying, the scan is the two-minute way to find out before we ever get on a call.
Why it exists: you can't fix tracking you can't see. Sonar shows us both the truth before any work starts.
Scan your site
Every Dolphin Analytics engagement starts with talking to us. Send a message, or book a call straight away. From there it's a scoped project or an ongoing value-based retainer.
Tell us what's going on with your data, or grab a 30-minute slot on the calendar straight away. No sales script to sit through either way.
If you booked a call, we come to it with your message already read. If not, we reply within one working day with a considered view of the problem. Sometimes we need view-only access to the relevant systems to see what's happening for ourselves. We'll tell you what we need and why.
Pricing is value-based on both: you pay for the outcome, not the hours.
We fix one scoped thing.
We run your analytics, ongoing.
Each platform measures with its own attribution model, window and consent handling, so GA4, Meta Ads and Google Ads will never agree to the penny. Small gaps are normal; a large gap that persists usually means a tracking fault rather than a reporting quirk. A tracking audit tells you which of the two you have and what the fix looks like.
Shopify is the till and GA4 is the camera: trust Shopify for money and GA4 for behaviour. Refunds, consent-blocked sessions, checkout tracking gaps and timezone settings all open a gap between the two. Most of it closes once the checkout tracking and consent set-up are done properly.
Four symptoms you can check today: unassigned traffic climbing in GA4, sudden spikes in direct traffic, conversions that don't match the ad platform or the store, and numbers that went flat or jumped after a site change. Any one of them is grounds for an audit, and the free Dolphin Analytics audit is the diagnostic.
Server-side tagging, also called server-side tracking, routes your marketing data through a server you control, using a server-side GTM container and the Meta Conversions API, instead of relying on the browser alone. It helps most where ad spend is high and consent or ad-blocker losses are heavy. Plenty of setups don't need it yet; fix the basics first.
Client-side tagging runs every platform's script in the visitor's browser, so ad blockers, browser tracking prevention and short cookie lifetimes all eat into what gets recorded. Server-side tagging sends one request from the browser to a server container you control, and that container forwards the data on to GA4, Google Ads and Meta. The events are the same; what changes is where they are collected and who decides what leaves.
Partially, yes. Cookie consent and iOS App Tracking Transparency mean a share of your visitors is never tracked client-side, so platforms record fewer conversions than actually happen. Server-side tracking and Consent Mode v2's modelled conversions recover much of the signal; an audit shows how much you're losing.
Yes. Dolphin Analytics works white-label or alongside your team, inside your existing GA4 and Google Tag Manager access. Agencies use us to fix client tracking under their own brand and to turn one-off fixes into retainers.
Google Tag Assistant checks your GA4, Google Ads and GTM tags fire correctly. The checks we run on a site, what the tool misses, and a faster full scan.
9 Sept 2026GTM vs GA4: Google Tag Manager deploys your tracking tags, GA4 collects and reports the data. How we set both up for clients, and which you need first.
8 Sept 2026GA4 DebugView not working? Why it shows no events, how to switch on debug mode with GTM Preview or Tag Assistant, and the order we check tags for clients.
Tell us what's broken, or grab a time. Either way you hear from a person, not a sales script.
Thirty minutes on Google Meet with the founder.
Open the calendar in a new tab
The booking lands on the same record as your message.