Now we’re taking a look at the benefits and shortcomings of each of these tag management solutions in terms of the internal effort required in relationship to whether all vendors are fully supported. (See image above)

As you can see, employing a full enterprise TMS requires the least internal effort with 100% of vendors fully supported. 100% vendor support means you can even manage other types of tags (container and universal), but it doesn’t work the other way around. Meanwhile, near the other end of the scale, a Container Tag solution requires quite a bit of internal effort, but only around half of all vendor tags are supported and they don’t work very well with web analytics. A full TMS ensures campaign and conversion tracking, and most important, a speedy page-load time. Why would you even consider another solution?

“It’s worth noting that server-side container tags can be managed and optimized through a client-side tag management system, but the inverse is not true. This is a primary reason we continue to focus so heavily on client-side performance at this point in time, rather than more nascent server-side protocols,” she writes while also highlighting that a full tag management system allows for ALL tags to be managed through the technology, “rather than a point solution that requires customers to still optimize many client-side third-party tags that are not or cannot be integrated, in order to control their tag and page performance.”

It’s a pretty strong argument.

What do you think?

Evolution of Tag Management

As JavaScript tags for tracking a website’s campaigns become increasingly complex, every marketer longs for the holy grail of tag management to solve their problems and give them freedom and control.

And while Tag Management Systems (TMS) are emerging as the leading solution in the space now, they weren’t the first.

Let’s take a closer look at the tag management solutions that emerged over time–from pixel piggy backing to a container tag to the universal tag, and finally to TMS.

Pixel Piggy Backing
Pixel piggy backing involves customizing a third-party image tag or code — for each page of your site — that sets cookies in a user’s browser to track their behavior.

While this method has been known to provide real-time data for publishers and advertisers, its customizations can be just as complex — if not more complex — than implementing JavaScript tags. Page-load time also increases, as the pixels are often placed on the bottom of the page.

Container Tag
Likewise, a container tag also sometimes further complicates site tag implementation. Since its third-party code loads an in iFrame (also often at the bottom of the page) there’s an increase in page-load time, turning away site visitors and affecting ranking in Google and other search engines. Most important, container tags only work with about 50% of vendor tags. And they won’t play very well with your web analytics systems.

Universal Tag
Given its name, the universal tag has been heralded as the great hope of tag management.  What you get with this tag is one single code–that directly loads scripts into the page–to capture data from all other data sources. It’s essentially one code format that many vendors have to agree to so that all data can flow through the one source. Sure, this solution can save time and cost, but it can result in being locked in with one vendor (often a web analytics vendor).

Tag Management Systems
Tag Management Systems (TMS) take the concepts of the universal tag and the container tag one step further. Acting like a content management system for all site-wide tags, TMS enables placing all tags–including container and universal tags–into one system. The application deploys just one snippet of code on each page to manage them all, and instead of serving all tags on all pages at all times TMS only serves tags as needed. Furthermore, advertisers and agencies can manage all third-party data collection services in one place, ultimately reducing the need for IT as a resource, improving quality control, and expediting the go-live time for new and updated tags and campaigns.

We’re living in a data-driven age, where marketers need to prove ROI. They’re reliant on tracking systems that end up littering websites with pixels, tags, and widgets. Because of this, the need for a tag management solution is becoming more critical. Investing in a solution now will eventually save you time and money.

JavaScript tags have become a cornerstone of code for Web analytics, online testing, behavioral targeting, affiliate marketing, ad serving, search marketing, and more. Without an efficient, flexible and adaptive tag management system, managing what can easily become dozens and dozens of individual pieces of code can become, according to a recent report on tag management from Forrester Research:

• A perpetual process
• Expensive
• Flying blind (due to an inability to manage tag status and visibility)
• Error-prone

These problem apply to many, but not all, commercial websites. So how can you tell if your own site is ready for a tag management system?

Forrester has developed an easy, six-step assessment framework to assess website measurement, performance, and management characteristics and evaluate the common drivers of tag management issues. Your total audit score will correlate with their recommendations of where your Web site falls on the spectrum of tag management risk.

Download the report (which is available only for the next four weeks) and take Forrester’s 6-step web site audit to determine if your site needs a tag management system.

image credit: SEG Measurement

Accuracy. A tag management system deploys consistent analytics tags on all pages. Across the board, analytics become more consistent, relevant and accurate.

Efficiency. The ability to add, remove, and edit tags at any point in site development with little to no need for IT involvement means tag management is faster and cheaper.

Freedom. Tag management systems support many tags from multiple applications and can apply these tags to any page. This means enormous flexibility. Site owners can run tags on specific pages, add or remove vendors and agencies, or run proof-of-concept projects.

Restores tag ownership to measurement experts. A tag management system allows the web analytics team to govern tags rather than the IT department. This eliminates process roadblocks and speed analytics initiatives.

Stewardship. Tags can be standardized across all applications, sites, and users. Such consistency supports measurement frameworks, technical best practices, and privacy and regulatory compliance mandates.

Enhanced page load performance. A tag management system reduces page weight to improve page load performance. This can result in significant increases in conversion rates for e-commerce sites.

We encourage you to download the entire Forrest report, How Tag Management Improves Web Intelligence.

A good question, yet one many marketers, web analytics and IT departments are ill equipped to answer. To help them address this critical question, Forrester Research has developed a six-point tag audit and tag management scorecard to help all parties involved determine their level of tag management risk.

The audit poses questions regarding the number of tags on a site, the time and frequency involved in changing or updating them,  and the number of parties involved in the tag management process.

The simple audit is included in Forrester’s report How Tag Management Improves Web Intelligence. Feel free to download the report and receive step-by-step instructions to audit your own tag management needs.

Bryan Eisenberg

Speaker, best-selling author, columnist, digital marketing pioneer and more, Bryan Eisenberg has become something of a legend as a digital marketing pioneer, web metrics guru, and all around advocate of digital marketing best practices.

He’s also is the newest member of TagMan’s advisory board (see seperate press release). We sat down with him to discuss why he feels the tag management issue is an important one now, and what role he’ll play in moving the company forward.

Q: Why focus on this company at this time?

Bryan Eisenberg: A couple of issues. There’s several things that TagMan does is that are at the forefront of what marketers are concerned about. One of them is attribution management and the other big one is that people keep hearing they have to add robustness to their websites. “It’s just one more tag, it’s just one more tag.” People are getting tagged out, and this is a company that’s found a solution to deal with that. Getting anything changed on a website is challenging today. To get testing done you have to add these functionalities. When you have something that can eliminate one more frustration from the battle that marketing has with IT, it’s a good thing.

 Q: You’re deeply involved in web metrics and you’re a founding member of the Web Analytics Association. Does that play a role in your association with TagMan?

Eisenberg: Oh, definitely. That’s where my first battles in dealing with any kind of JavaScript tags really came in. Of course, you’re also looking at all the social plug-ins today. Publishers are adding ad features. It’s all become one thing after another. And it’s all focused on getting the data. This can help you with attribution as well as the management of all those tags.

Q: Let’s talk about attribution and why it’s so important to accomplish that task.

Eisenberg: Most people haven’t been aware of the attribution issue until really recently when Google began really talking about it, saying they were going to have their search funnel and their multichannel funnel. So people started getting the idea that it might be important. I still see very few people actually using it.

I remember we really started understanding the link between search and keywords and attribution about eight years ago.  One of our clients had a very broad term that never, ever, ever converted. Ever. So he decided he was going to shut it off. The following two weeks, his sales were down 30-something percent. He realized that what had happened was earlier on people were starting to recognize his brand, then later on in the search funnel he was showing up again, and they had confidence he was showing up and knew what he was talking about.

There’s no way for him to easily credit that earlier. He didn’t have a solution.

Q: Between all the things a tag management system can do: attribution, website optimization, even do-not-track compliance, what do you feel is the most important or vital?

Eisenberg: I don’t think we can narrow it down to one. Tag acceleration makes it important. But really it’s pain points, and where the market is. The nice thing is it’s one solution that has multiple purposes. That’s very valuable, as opposed to buying three different solutions from three different companies for three different problems. I’m always a big fan of that.

 Q: How aware do you think the market is of tag management as a problem? Is the market ready for this solution, or is it a year too early?

Eisenberg: This is one place where I think the U.S. lags behind the rest of the world. In Europe there’s been a lot more discussion about tags and cookies, privacy laws in general. People here haven’t been made as aware of it, plus there’s a lot more people in this market. It’s not mainstream, but it certainly will become so. One thing I’ve definitely learned is the second Google starts focusing on something and rings the bell, the more people actually catch on to it. They just did multichannel funnels, I think that’s going to help educate marketers. They’ll learn very basic stuff and they’ll want more.

Q: Talk a little about how you hope to personally contribute to TagMan.

Eisenberg: One of my main goals is the same goal I’ve had since Day 1: helping marketers become more efficient at their marketing efforts. Part of that is through education. One of the first things I started discussing with TagMan was showing them interesting research studies we should be taking a look at. We need to learn what marketers are talking about and what they’re interested in, and if we have to bring them in via their own interests, we’ll do that. We’ve seen that in some of the research that’s been coming out the past couple of weeks, such as the one on social plug-ins and another on Internet retailers and page speed.

Q: Is there anything you’d like to add to what we’ve discussed?

Eisenberg: For the most part, lots of American companies have trouble accepting companies from abroad as leaders. Apart from a couple of Israeli companies, like ICQ, U.S. marketers have not been accepting of international companies. A lot of them are innovating far beyond what we’re doing here in the States. Some issues have occurred there before they occurred here, like page management issues. TagMan has a track record, they’ve worked with big companies in the U.K. This isn’t something you just piece together.

Accelerated page loading is obviously great for SEO and user experience, but what about site owners? There will be some interesting discussions to be had about what Google will be able to do with the data they gain access to by serving your pages.

Faster page loading can’t, however, compete with everything a tag management system such as ours has to offer. We’re focused on providing robust control over the tags and tracking pixels on your site. As part of that we’ve developed methods for significantly reducing the impact of tags on page load time while simultaneously improving the accuracy of data collection.

What Google appears to be offering with the Page Speed Service is competitive with other solutions in the market that focus solely on page acceleration. We think we dovetail nicely into that solution to increase page speed further still through better tag management.

Reasons to buy:
1. TagMan is in constant development to keep up with the latest technologies that can be served through our container solution and, unless developers are assigned to this process internally, what has been built will quickly fall behind and become redundant.

Example: 3rd party technology suppliers regularly update their tags and this requires both a code change on the site and an update to the tag libraries in the container solution.

2. Legal requirements – the US FTC and the EU are in the process of introducing new legislation to safeguard consumer privacy online, with regard to the use of cookies. The latest regulations in the EU, for example, aim to ensure that users opt in to being tracked. With this in mind, tag management systems have to be either fast to respond or, as in the case of TagMan, already equipped to provide global privacy options in the tool to give the consumer control over how they are tracked.

Example: Discussions are coming to a head on industry self-regulation or ‘do not track’ privacy legislation but the consequences of changes could make a particular tagging system redundant and need changing.

3. Tag management technology is itself advancing rapidly and some of the latest features of the TagMan container (which are the culmination of four years’ technical work) include the ability to:

• Add, edit and delete tags while browsing your own website
• Growing tag library of over 150 tagging technologies
• Define new parameters without touching the code on the site
• Smart loading of tags (so disabling tags that slow down page load times)
• Multi-part tags (this is the ability to wrap code to different parts of a web page for use with MVT tags, for example)
• Server tags
• Global opt-out of tracking for consumers

Example: With sprint launches every four weeks, some of our developments are minor tweaks honed to improve the efficiency of the technology, and some are major releases to provide new functionality – but TagMan never sits still.

In the end, our answer to the buy or build question is that it took our founder Paul Cook – an absolute pioneer in online tracking – four years to come up with the best possible universal container tag and tag management system. He, and a large team of equally talented developers and support staff, work entirely on supporting and improving it. So, is it possible for a business to build its own? Yes. Is it feasible? We would say no.

What do you think of the buy or build argument? Got some examples of where ‘build’ has worked or where ‘buy’ hasn’t? We’re happy to hear from you.

New York, NY – Judged by senior industry peers from the likes of Omnicom, Rapp, Wieden+Kennedy , MediaVest, Online Publishers Association and Return Path; the award represents “the best existing, new or improved analytics and measurement platform innovation to provide metrics and insights for advertisers, publishers, and marketers”. TagMan’s attribution focused technology beat out entrants and finalists, to be judged the clear winner by informed US industry heavy-weights in this exciting sector.

The DPAC Awards honor overall excellence and breakthrough achievement in US digital publishing and advertising. The purpose of the DPAC Awards is to recognize the outstanding efforts being made in digital publishing and advertising.
The award was accepted by Chris Brinkworth, TagMan’s CMO, at the DPAC Gala in New York City on December 9, 2010.