We’re pleased to annouce the beta version of above-the-fold detection support for TagMan view tags. TagMan view tags can be use to track ad views regardless of which ad server is being used. These tags provide a highly cost-effective (cheap!) way of tracking impressions in the path to conversion. The new release allows you to only count “views” on banners where the banner has appeared on the screen, traditional ad tracking counts views even if the ad is served off the bottom or side of the page and it is never scrolled on to. As well as on-screen tracking we also offer more qualified view-based conversions by allowing a window within which a user must engaged (visit the site) for a conversion to be counted. For example you may want to allow 24 hours for someone to start a quote and then 30 days for them to complete the transaction. We’re now beta testing the on-screen tracking with clients and look forward to reporting back the results in due course

I was at a meeting with an agency earlier and we got talking about tracking conversions across multiple clients in unrelated categories. This could be useful for  a number of reasons, both to provide insight into the relationship between brands and also to enable targeting in future. Currently companies wanting to do this would need to either take a feed from DoubleClick or Atlas in order to use their user ids or actually share personal data between clients (which is unlikely to be possible for legal reasons). The new version of TagMan actually logs the global user id for all conversions, making such analysis easy. 

What’s more you can also get arrival data to tell you that the person who searched for car insurance and didn’t convert is the same person who’s bought a holiday from another client. The uses for this anonymous data are endless and will allow large agencies to use their scale to really add value for clients. And for those who want to go a step further you can also get TagMan to write its global user id into other peoples tags, allowing this data to be merged with other third party data or integrating with insight from your analytics system.

A lot of client discussions regarding tag management recently have covered the conditional tag serving of TagMan so thought it was worth giving a quick overview.  TagMan can be configured with a number of tagsets each delivering a different vendors tag into the container tag (e.g affiliate network pixels, if affiliate de-duplication is the goal). The user configuring TagMan can decide whether the tag should be served at all times or conditionally, depending on the campaign that was responsible for delivering the user and thus providing CPA de-duplication.

The campaign setup can also include natural search tracked as an impression and paid search tracked as a click to ensure priority campaigns have a greater level of traction.  Different campaigns can be allocated different lengths of window for a user to arrive at the site (if tracking views) or to return and convert depending on the rules set in the interface. 

TagMan uses cookie data that is created when a user views or clicks on TagMan tracked media, to decide which tagset to deliver into the container tag, and therefore only delivering the relevant tag for the action that has occurred. This allows you control the online marketing campaigns and the valuable data associated with those conversions.

I was at a client meeting this week an the question of page download came up so I thought I’d jot down the answer here. TagMan consists of a JavaScript library and short amount of code that is included in each page. The library is standardised and shared across all clients so that users only download it once per session.

To prevent tags from slowing down the page, you can configure TagMan to writes out into an iframe instead of directly into the page.  The advantage of writing tags out into an iframe is they will not delay the page from completing like Javascript does.  If the business logic dictates that no 3^rd party tags need to be served, minimal code is sent back to the page, keeping bandwidth to an absolute minimum and reducing the impact on page download speed.  However, if page weight remains an issue you can always store a lightweight configuration in TagMan that you can roll back to in case of an emergency.

Is comprehensive one of those words like epic that are always overused?  It seems that lots of companies have the most comprehensive tag management solution on the market that can deliver any market tracking tag.  When it comes down to the crunch, however, a lot of solutions have real problems incorporating some tracking solutions such as Google Analytics.

TagMan can claim to be fully comprehensive because it can deploy other piggy-back solutions, whereas you can’t use them to deploy TagMan! 

Mix this with the fact it can deploy javascript based tag solutions, de-dupe based on post impression click or view activity and set conditional first/last click rules for completed actions and comprehensive is very much the word.

No client wants a webpage to hang, appear blank, not load or redirect to another page.  Tagging mistakes are easily made, and usually only noticed once live and when you need to generate a report.  TagMan provides comprehensive change control so you can instantly roll back to a previous configuration, test changes on a staging server and then be deployed live by users with the correct permissions.  This is all the while providing accountability by logging who is updating what.

Also, because tags are launched via TagMan, should a particular vendor tag be slowing page load it can easily be removed at the click of a button through the TagMan interface rather than having to ask the webmaster to remove it. 

Or even better, how about being able to set an end date against a vendor tag so that it’s automatically removed without you having to remember to remove it or do anything else.

TagMan will save you time. Being in control of the tagging process means that there will be fewer mistakes and improved accuracy, now that’s got to be a good thing……….

I would guess that most clients are paying far too much in commission payments to multiple marketing partners and vendors for a single lead or sale and that this is the norm rather than the exception.

I was in a meeting today with a large media agency (modesty forbids etc.) talking about de-duplication, and they were outraged that affiliates could tag both links on an affiliate network and redirect through these to claim double commissions. They also conservatively (small “c”) estimated that they were overpaying affiliates by 30%. As digital marketing budgets rise even in the current economic climate, that means more and more revenue is being wasted.

Whether the norm or not, for those clients that are, saving money by reducing over-payments on duplicate solution commissions is critical, and an easy win for increasing ROI of marketing spend.  That can only be a good thing.

So what’s the answer? Well I reckon one way is to serve conditional tags onto a page based on who the referrer or owner of the “lead” is. This means that only relevant tags are served when and where needed, reducing the over-delivery of marketing tags that aren’t. So – only the correct referrer gets counted for the lead. And it’s only them that get’s paid! And there you go: de-duplication and the elimination of duplicate affiliate comissions in one nice, neat, easy solution. BTW – a nice by-product of this is that you also get extra data protection, because only the referrer gets to track and count the tag.

De-duplication of media and the delivery of any market tracking tag are key features of TagMan. They can directly save clients money and make the whole online marketing ecosystem more accountable.

As we get this blog up and running I just wanted to introduce you to the concept of TagMan.  TagMan is a universal tagging system that enables Web site administrators, advertising and marketing teams and media agencies to manage, track and control all of their tagging needs with the use of one single tag. 

A single TagMan tag can house multiple tagging solutions to de-duplicate all online performance marketing and make the tagging process much simpler. You can track all your marketing channels, natural search included, and compare them side-by-side for response attribution modelling. 

Our aim is to make sure TagMan works with all tag based online marketing solutions, including content optimisation and web analytics. Currently we support major vendors like Atlas, DoubleClick and Google Analytics but support can be added easily for all of the tag-based solutions we’ve seen so far.

TagMan fills the gap between Ad Serving, Content Management and Web Analytics. Take control of your online marketing performance…