Selling tickets and tracking pixels on Eventbrite
I can’t figure out how to link my event on Eventbrite to my Google ads account and therefore can’t run any Google ads to help sell tickets.
I set up the tracking ID on the eventbrite account but am not sure how to link it back to my google analytics…. eventbrite.com isn’t working and if I copy paste the specific event URL it says it’s too long. help!
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The short answer is:
The most robust and accurate solution for linking Eventbrite ticket sales to your Google Ads and Google Analytics 4 accounts, bypassing the common client-side limitations you’re experiencing, is a server-side integration using Eventbrite Webhooks and the Google Ads API combined with the Google Analytics Measurement Protocol via a server-side tagging environment like Google Tag Manager (GTM) Server Container hosted on Stape or GCP.
Eventbrite’s native tracking pixel setup is unreliable and the platform does not fully support cross-domain linking for GA4 in a client-side scenario, causing the data loss and URL length issues you’ve seen.
By utilizing the Eventbrite Webhooks, you can capture real-time, server-level events (like Order.placed or Attendee.registered) directly on your server, enriching them with click IDs (gclid/GA Client ID) from your initial landing page via cross-domain linking parameters like _eboga, and then securely sending this server-to-server data to the Google Ads API for reliable conversion tracking and to the Google Analytics Measurement Protocol for accurate e-commerce reporting.
The long answer is:
The core problem you’re encountering stems from the technical limitations of relying on client-side tracking pixels on a third-party domain like Eventbrite, which suffers from browser restrictions, ad-blockers, and Eventbrite’s own constraints on customization, which is why the conversion ID/label method is unreliable and your GA attempts are failing.
To establish a cost-effective, durable, and accurate data synchronization, you must implement a server-side solution centered on Eventbrite Webhooks and the Google Ads API for conversions, complemented by the Google Analytics Measurement Protocol for reporting.
The first step involves leveraging Eventbrite Webhooks, specifically the Order.placed and Attendee.registered webhooks, which are Eventbrite’s built-in mechanism for notifying external systems about critical events in real-time.
You will set up an endpoint on a server, ideally a Google Tag Manager (GTM) Server Container hosted on a service like Stape (for cost-effectiveness and ease of setup) or on a dedicated Google Cloud Platform (GCP) service like Cloud Run or App Engine.
When a ticket is purchased, Eventbrite sends a JSON payload to your server endpoint, which contains key transaction details but importantly, is initiated by Eventbrite’s server, not the user’s browser, thus bypassing client-side blockers.
The next critical piece is linking this server-side purchase event back to the original Google Ads click and the user’s session in Google Analytics.
You achieve this by ensuring your initial landing page, which hosts your Google Ads click, includes the Google Click ID (gclid) and the Google Analytics Client ID in the URL when redirecting to Eventbrite.
While Eventbrite’s native GA integration may be failing, the platform does support a custom parameter, historically _eboga, for passing the GA Client ID for cross-domain linking, which your setup must manually ensure is appended to the Eventbrite link on your site.
Your server-side GTM container will need to be configured to look up and store these identifiers upon the user’s initial arrival.
When the Eventbrite Webhook fires, the event data it sends is correlated with these stored identifiers.
Finally, your server-side GTM setup transforms the webhook data.
For Google Ads, a new HTTP request containing the gclid and conversion details is sent to the Google Ads API for Offline Conversion upload, which is the most reliable way to register sales and is far superior to client-side pixels for performance Max and Smart Bidding campaigns.
Simultaneously, another HTTP request is sent using the Google Analytics Measurement Protocol to the GA4 property’s dedicated endpoint, reconstructing the full purchase event with the correct GA Client ID, transaction ID, value, and currency, which ensures that your e-commerce revenue data in Google Analytics 4 is complete and accurate, something the client-side pixel often fails to do due to the cross-domain nature of the transaction.
This server-side methodology is highly cost-effective in the long run as it dramatically improves the data quality feeding your Google Ads bidding algorithms, leading to a much higher return on ad spend (ROAS) than could ever be achieved with unreliable client-side tracking.
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