How First-Party Tracking Works
First-party tracking sends tracking requests to a hostname you control, rather than to the analytics vendor's own domain. Because the request goes to your site, browsers and ad blockers are less likely to treat it as a third-party tracker and block it.
Common Setups
- Proxy through your website: your server forwards a path on your own domain to the vendor's endpoint
- Collection subdomain: a subdomain such as
lr.example.compoints to the vendor with a CNAME DNS record - Server-side events: your backend sends sensitive events such as payments directly to the vendor, similar to server-to-server tracking
For example, instead of a script calling analytics.vendor.com, the site loads its events path from example.com/collect. The request looks like ordinary site traffic. On the web this usually involves an SDK script that you load on your pages, and it feeds web attribution.
First-Party Tracking vs Privacy
First-party does not mean consent-free. Collecting data through your own domain does not remove the need for consent and privacy compliance where the law requires it. It improves delivery reliability, not legal standing.
Linkrunner's Web SDK (beta) supports first-party collection through a proxy on your own site or a customer-owned collection subdomain with a CNAME record. See the web attribution page and the Web SDK docs for setup details on the beta.