Think about a shop that counts how many people walk past the window, how many stop, and how many come in. None of those numbers is a sale, and together they tell the shopkeeper whether the window display is doing its job.

Web tracking does the same for your digital presence. Marketing Cloud Next can record page views, form submissions, link clicks and button clicks on both hosted landing pages and your external website, and feed that engagement data into Data Cloud for better segmentation.

What gets tracked

Four activities are recorded.

• Page views.
• Form submissions.
• Link clicks.
• Button clicks.

The four tracking scenarios

There are four setups, and the requirements differ meaningfully between them.

Scenario	Key requirements
Landing pages with a consent banner	Data Cloud integration, the Data Cloud Web Tracking Consent Banner integration, and banner design
Landing pages without a consent banner	Data Cloud integration, Relaxed CSP, and event tracking code in head markup
External sites with a consent banner	External Tracking data kit, Website connector, banner design, and embed code
External sites without a consent banner	External Tracking data kit, Website connector, and embed code

Notice that the landing page scenarios use Data Cloud integrations while the external site scenarios use an External Tracking data kit and a Website connector. That difference in plumbing is the first thing to be clear about.

The cookies

Cookie	Duration	Purpose
_sfid_${domainHash}	730 days	Creates a unique visitor ID on a landing page visit
sfmc_consent	365 days	True means opted in, False means opted out or the banner was ignored
guest_uuid_essential_<SiteID>	365 days	No longer used but still set on a visit

The second cookie is the one that governs behaviour. The third is worth knowing about precisely because it is vestigial, and a consultant being asked about cookies needs to know that it does nothing.

First-party tracking is recommended, which means aligning all pages under your root domain. The industry is moving away from third-party cookies, and this is a background change that will continue to shape how tracking is implemented.

Landing pages with a consent banner

1. Go to Setup, then Web Tracking, then Consent Banner, and customise the banner.
2. Go to Setup, then All Sites, then Marketing Landing Pages, then Builder, then Settings, then Integrations.
3. Add the Data Cloud integration and the Data Cloud Web Tracking Consent Banner integration, then publish.
4. To test, create a landing page and view it in a real browser.

Two permissions notes apply. Configuring external tracking requires the Marketing Cloud Admin permission set. Creating and publishing a consent banner requires the Marketing Cloud Manager permission set plus a CMS workspace contributor role, specifically content admin or content manager.

Two practical notes are also worth keeping. To track a landing page on a custom domain, add a custom URL for that domain in Setup and define the path as /lp. And any time you change the banner, publish the Marketing Landing Pages site again in Experience Cloud. Forgetting the second publish is a common cause of a banner change that appears not to work.

Landing pages without a consent banner

1. Set the security level to Relaxed CSP under Site Settings, then Security and Privacy.
2. Add the Data Cloud integration, and specifically not the consent banner integration.
3. Add the tracking code snippet to Head Markup, which removes the need for a consent banner.
4. Publish.

The Head Markup code dispatches a set-consent custom event.

<script> document.dispatchEvent( new CustomEvent('experience_interaction', { bubbles: true, composed: true, detail: { name: 'set-consent', value: true }, }) ); </script> 

Note the security implication of this route. Relaxed CSP is required, which is a deliberate loosening of the site's content security policy. That is a reasonable trade in some contexts and should be an explicit decision rather than a quick fix.

External site tracking

1. Create a Website Connector through Setup, then Web Tracking, then Website Connectors, then New.
2. Create a Webpage Embed Code, giving it a name, selecting the connector, choosing the consent requirement and associating a campaign.
3. Copy the embed code and add it to your external site's head tag.

There is a version caveat here. Before Winter '26, you need to update your external tracking configuration by replacing the old embed script with the new one. Teams that set up tracking before that release and have not revisited it are running a script that should be replaced.

Compliance

You remain responsible for complying with privacy law. If consent is required, the first page view is not recorded, because it happens before consent is given.

The same consent banner is used for both landing pages and external sites, which is convenient when the policy is consistent across properties.

Where people go wrong

The first error is expecting the first page view to appear in reporting when a consent banner is required. It is not recorded, by design, because the visitor has not consented yet.

The second is adding content to the default Marketing Landing Pages site. That site is a behind-the-scenes framework, and content does not belong there.

The third is forgetting the custom URL and the /lp path for custom domain tracking.

The fourth is failing to update a pre-Winter '26 external tracking script.

The fifth is changing the consent banner and not republishing the site in Experience Cloud.

The sixth is using the consent banner integration when building the no-banner variant, or the reverse. The two integrations are distinct, and using the wrong one produces silent non-tracking.

Check for understanding

1. What four activities does web tracking record?
2. Which cookie stores the consent decision, and what do its two values mean?
3. Why is the first page view not recorded when a consent banner is required, and what would you tell a client who expects to see it?

Previous: Post 32 covered consent by channel and the five-step troubleshooting path.
Next: Post 34 covers contact points and activation, including the source priority order that governs delivery.