Every pixel,
pipeline & platform — decoded.
The reference, tooling, and weekly intelligence for the people who build and depend on web tracking — implementation engineers, measurement & marketing managers, data engineers, and agency partners.
Free · gated by email · the weekly briefing comes with it
Point them at a URL. Get answers.
Paste a raw GA4, Universal Analytics, Adobe Analytics, or Meta Pixel request — get every parameter decoded and labelled in plain English.
Build and validate campaign URLs against the UTM Standard and your own taxonomy — single, bulk, and audit modes.
Inspect a public GTM container: every tag, trigger, variable, and the data-layer keys it reads.
Validate a live data layer against the dataLayer Spec and flag missing or malformed keys.
Audit TCF v2.2, GPP, and Consent Mode v2 signals — and whether tags actually honour them.
Enumerate cookies and storage a site sets, classified by purpose and vendor.
We also grade the trackers.
The same expertise that builds tracking can audit it. The privacy pillar serves the people who want to prevent it.
Analytics & tracking vendors graded A–F on five privacy dimensions — evidence-backed, methodology published.
Tracking-prevention guides →Harden your browser, pick the right extensions and DNS, and understand what GPC actually enforces.
Four pillars, one source of truth
How tracking actually works
Beacons, the data layer, identity, sessionization, consent, and server-side collection — from first principles to edge cases.
PlatformsGA4, Adobe, and the open-source field
Implementation references for GA4, Adobe Analytics/Launch, Tealium, Piwik PRO, Plausible, Umami, Matomo, and Snowplow.
PipelinesWarehouse-native data
BigQuery, dbt, Airflow/Dagster, reverse-ETL, and modeling event data for analysis you can trust.
CDP & ActivationCDPs, testing, personalization
Segment, RudderStack, mParticle, and the activation patterns behind experimentation and personalization.
Citable specs the industry can adopt
Open, versioned standards for the things every team reinvents badly. Reference them, link them, build against them.
One briefing. The whole tracking stack.
Every week: what changed in GA4, Adobe, the tag managers, CMPs, CDPs, and the warehouse-native world — plus new tools, deprecations, and the deadlines you can’t miss. Read it, or get the YouTube / podcast version.
Subscribe and the State of Web Tracking report lands in your inbox.
Weekly. Free. One-click unsubscribe. Opens Substack in a new tab — you won't lose your place here.