Archive for the ‘Tagging nightmares’ Category

The ultimate container tag – all the tags plugged in through TagMan

Friday, June 11th, 2010

Below is the list so far of all the tags that TagMan clients currently have plugged into their websites through TagMan. It’s a long list and helps to demonstrate just how many systems rely on tags to work and why tag management has become a crucial issue for website owners. Remember, every tag you have on a page slows it down and each one reports data that could be even more useful if it was reported in the same place (and using the same rules) as all the rest.

Web Analytics
AT Internet
Coremetrics
Google Analytics
IndexTools
Microsoft
Omniture
Unica
Webtrends

Display advertising/ad servers
Adconian
Advertising.com
Atlas
Blue Lithium
Doubleclick
Eyeblaster
Facilitate
Flashtalking
Mediaplex
Trip Advisor
Unanimis
ValueClick

Retargeting
Criteo
Infectious Media
Invite Media
Mediaplex
Right Media
Specific Media
Struq

PPC
Bing
Click Equations
Double Click
Google AdWords
iCrossing
Kenshoo
Marin
MSN
Yahoo

Affiliate
Adcell
Adconion
Adscale
AdTiger
Affiliate Future
Affiliate Window
Affilinet
Buyat
Commission Junction
Hotels Combined
iProspect
Linkshare
Mediastay
Metanetwork
Peak Point
Quown
Rupiz
TradeDoubler
Webgains
Xtendmedia
Zanox

Email
Cheetahmail
Email reaction
SilverPop

Other
Channel Advisor
Coomunicate
Do-Hop
edigital
eFrontier
Kelkoo
Lynku
Lyris/Clickstream
Nextag
Peerius
PriceGrabber
Qype
Returnity
Shopzilla
Z Mags
TravelSupermarket

New tags are being added all the time but it shows just how complex the world of tagging has become.

TagMan Solves Slow Page Load/Audience Loss Problems with Introduction of New TagMan ServerTags

Tuesday, May 11th, 2010

Excess Ad and Analytics Tags Slowing Page Loads and Contributing to Traffic Abandonment

NEW YORK (May 10, 2010)  TagMan, the single-tag/pixel solution to the problems of online campaign tracking, today announced the introduction of ServerTags, that enable publishers to reduce or eliminate slow page loads and audience loss that result from having dozens of  ad/analytics tags/pixels on their sites. Slower page loads encourage users to abandon their retail and e-commerce site visits, resulting in lower sales.

ServerTags move the housing of  all ad tags and pixels off publisher/retailer pages to TagMan’s server where they still perform their call functions, but do not impede pages from loading.

“A recent internal TagMan study confirmed that the slowest‐loading assets on site pages were tracking tags, taking as long as 250ms to fully load. Based on our experience, a delay of around one second causes approximately 10% of users to abandon the page, suggesting that four tags on the page could cost sites 10% of their potential visitors,” says Jon Baron, TagMan’s General Manager. “While the figures depend on how important the users feel the page content was, such an adverse affect on user experience causes a significant loss of revenue for online retailers. The problems were not just with tags from small vendors, tags from major vendors introduce significant delays to page downloads.”

TagMan ServerTags remove 1×1 pixels from the browser call,  speed up systems through cleaner integration and increase the ability of publishers to work with multiple partners.

No matter how many third parties a publisher wants to work with, they only end up with one tag being served in the users’ browsers. Reducing many pixel calls to a single TagMan call benefits both the client and their customers.

“Slow page loads due to excess page tags was already a problem when we did our study in the first quarter, but now that Google recently announced it has started ranking webpages by the speed with which they load, the stakes just got higher for retail and e-commerce sites,” adds Mr. Baron.

TagMan will continue to offer its traditional publisher-side universal tag solution to give its clients the broadest possible choice.

TagMan (www.TagMan.com), the first independent tag and pixel management system, was built and developed by web analytics pioneer Paul Cook as a solution to the problems of implementing new tracking tags on advertiser websites. TagMan has revealed that up to 25% of a typical e-commerce advertiser’s commissions are duplicates.  TagMan’s universal tag solution  instantly deduplicates sales and attribute credit in real time across ALL online channels so that for every $1 spent with TagMan, clients see up to a $9.50 return on their investments.  Existing platforms do not offer this conversion report. The negative impact of too many pixels on a client’s website (contributing to shopping basket

abandonment) drove TagMan’s focus on latency and pixel reduction as a core part of the platform used by clients globally. Clients include online advertisers and agencies in the UK, US and Germany, including Virgin Atlantic, Subaru, Boden, Laura Ashley, Thomas Cook and Alliance & Leicester.

Founded in 2004, TagMan is privately owned and funded and has offices in New York and London. It has received funding from Cambridge Angels and the London Business School E100.

Tags matter

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

All the research we’ve been engaged in the past twelve months has sought to make a simple point – that tags really do matter.

While TagMan does one simple thing – house all your page tracking tags in one tag – it’s the problems that one thing solves that demonstrate just how integral to online marketing success (& failure) tags have become.

So, our latest Latency Test study – http://www.tagman.com/case-study/tracking-tag-management-latency-study.pdf – shows that tags affect your ability to do basic things like get your pages to load quickly and track the number of visits your site gets effectively.

Meanwhile, the deduplication research we published earlier this year (http://www.tagman.com/pf_cpa_duplication_amnesty) shows that the proliferation of different tags (ad servers, PPC, site analytics, affiliate networks) on client’s pages has made it impossible for agencies to tell which of them delivered the final click, and thus to which (if they pay on last click) they should pay commission. The problem we reckoned costs advertisers about £35m a year just on affiliate CPA duplication.

These things have proven reasonably easy to measure. But, the most basic ‘cost’ of tagging’ – the total pain of adding, editing and removing tags on a web page – is more tricky. There can be no doubt that agencies in particular face genuine costs as a result of this ongoing nightmare. First, in terms of the man hours it takes to create and implement new tags. Second, in terms of the delays to campaigns that occur in this process (when some site development cycles mean you have to wait three months to make a change, for example). And third, who’s counting the cost of the errors that are made in tracking campaigns because a tag has been added incorrectly? We’re hoping to announce soon a partnership with a major digital media agency to estimate all these things.

Last, there is the real strategic importance of tags. Marketing is truly becoming a data-driven business. To have any chance of holding sway in that future, organisations must become the owners and controllers of their own data. Given that this is delivered through tracking tags, that means regaining control of them.

Tags – tiny things that they are – really do matter.

Interesting tagging nightmares article

Friday, August 29th, 2008

I thought it was worth pointing out this interesting article on the e-consultancy Internet Marketing News blog about tagging nightmares.  Enjoy the read, it is definitely a subject coming to the fore at the moment.