1. Universal Tag? – Is that a Tag Management System?
2. Containter Tag solutions? – Are they a Tag Management System

UNIVERSAL TAG:

• Tag Management Systems should include, but are not a standalone  “Universal Tag or Universal Pixel” component
• A Universal Tag is generally considered as a “simplified platform for tagging “  It assists technology focused analytics experts in passing generic data so it can be mapped to a vendor-specific syntax at any time.
• A Universal Tag and other such deployment tools are generally attached to a web analytics vendor who can offer extraneous services as the product was born from their need to service clients.
• A Universal Tag, generally cannot deploy nor manage a complete Tag Management System, but a Tag Management System can contain and also deploy a Universal Tag – therefore ensuring freedom to switch when needed.

Question: Does your Universal Tag or “Tag Deployment Tool” have a corporate ownership/relationship spawned from a consulting company?

• EG: Is your deployment tool agnostic?
• EG: Do your existing analytics team and Analytics consulting agency feel comfortable with that ownership?
• EG: Will that agency ensure some tags work better than others?

CONTAINER TAG

• Tag Management Systems should include, as part of their complete service -  but are not a stand alone “Container Tag”  component
• A Container Tag solution is a simple piece of code that holds lots of tags and pixels on a page. You deploy and piggyback simple pixels and tags within a commonly ( i-frame container solution) .
• Container solutions allow you to ‘stuff tags’ into one solution; to assist slightly with containing certain tags or pixels without the site losing control.
• Container solutions are generally tied to an existing service such as an agency, ad-serving contract, data collection provider, DSP, exchange or other.   You only get the container ‘if’ you buy into their main offering.
• If you want to quickly change vendor (ad-server, media agency, DSP, Retargeting company etc) – you are a generally out of luck if they are also your main container solution hard-coded across your entire portfolio.
• You have no simple ease of visibility into the pixels/tags being stuffed into each container
• You have no real control over data ownership

-       A Container Tag, cannot deploy nor manage a Tag Management System.

Container solutions (eg, Floodlight, ZAP, UAT) can easily be deployed through a basic Tag Management System.  IE – Agencies and clients have no problem migrating Container Solutions into Tag Management Systems.

QUESTION:  Does the container tag solution you use leave you tied to a vendor you would not like to be tied to down the line? EG – are they agnostic?

• EG:  If a data/re-targeting focused vendor, is your container solution, or if one of your competitors invests in that business – is it the wolf, guarding the sheep?  Do they have yours and your consumers best interests and more importantly ownership and privacy concerns in mind?
• EG: If you want to leave them, what happens to all the data that they have collected for you the past year or so? Is it yours still?

TAG MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS To that end:  Container solutions and Universal Tags cannot deploy nor manage a Tag Management System – but, a Tag Management System (if the TMS is robust enough)  can easily allow you to swap out any and all container tags, universal tags or data management platform tags – without concern or being reliant / held hostage to a vendor. Our next post will focus on the deeper aspects of a Tag Management System and what you should look for in regards to the functionality. BTW – did you realize yet that TagMan stands “Tag Management” It’s not a cartoon super hero in a cape here to save your day; though we are very happy to do so!  Contact us for a demo, we’ve been doing this since 2007  and happy to show you all of our client success stories.

To Accelerate Client Online Advertising Campaigns

NEW YORK (August 30, 2010) Good Health Media, one of the fastest growing health ad networks, today announced that it has picked TagMan as its global “container tag,” enabling the company to accelerate its client online marketing campaigns while reducing costs by implementing third-party tags/pixels without IT resources.

TagMan’s single page tag will house all of the tags/pixels used to track Good Health Media (GHM) online ad campaigns, including display, paid and natural search, affiliates and email. Using the TagMan interface, GHM will have a single view of the effectiveness and interaction of its online advertising campaigns and will be able to see the interaction between the consumer and all online marketing channels, enabling it to enhance its optimization of online campaigns and media budget allocation.

“We chose to work with TagMan because it has an established track record in tag management and will help us drive better results for our advertisers and publishing partners. We can now instantly add or amend our tracking tags, which means we no longer have to send requests to different IT teams to change tags. This will save money as well as time,” says Bill Jennings, CEO of Good Health Media.

“Good Health Media can not only switch existing tags in and out in a matter of minutes, adding new tags instantly, it can now see the entire path a customer takes to conversion. This will enable them to make informed marketing optimisation decisions,” says Paul Cook, CEO, of TagMan. “We are pleased to have then as a partner.”

Good Health Media (www.ghmedia.com) delivers specific health condition audiences to pharma and consumer brands. The company’s “ConditionMatch” technology tracks and targets the most frequent visitors to niche health content, often at half the CPM of the major health portals. Advertisers include: Merck, J&J, Wyeth, Shire, Takeda, Walmart Pharmacy, and Amgen. Good Health Media was recently ranked as the fastest growing health ad network with 93% user growth in the past 12 months (Comscore).

GHM is backed by Metamorphic Ventures and several individual investors including Mike Perlis (Softbank), Rick Thompson/Larry Braitman (Founders Adify, Flycast), Joe Apprendi (Founder Collective), Richard Forman (Health Venture Group), Geoff Judge (co-founder 24/7), Bill Benedict (Alpine Meridian), Chris Young (Founder Digital Broadcasting Group). ConditionMatch and ConditionSearch are trademarks of Good Health Media.

TagMan (www.TagMan.com) is the single-tag solution to the problems of online campaign tracking and slow pages loads due to excess tags. By acting as a single, universal tag and interface through which tracking tags and pixels can be deployed to a retailer, e commerce or advertiser’s web site, online marketers can save time and money in the way they track campaigns and they can see how all online channels are working together. Clients include Virgin Atlantic, Subaru, Boden, Laura Ashley, Thomas Cook and Air New Zealand. TagMan was founded in November 2007 and has offices in New York and London.

Short version of this post: You are not handling Attribution in real-time.  You may ‘think’ you are – but you are not.   Attribution models, tell you what to do – but you still need to do it. TagMan can help you.

Long version of this post

Stuck in the lounge at the airport with 2 hour delay is a perfect chance to ask write and ask YOU, the reader,  to question the difference between ‘Attribution Modeling and Attribution Reporting’  (ie Passive vs Real-time).   Please, do comment below with your thoughts.

First, some words.  What is Multi Touch Attribution, Multi Channel Attribution, Marketing Attribution, Media Attribution (take a breath) Credit Attribution, Affiliate Attribution, Search Attribution…   There is just so much buzz, so many articles, so many conferences, reports etc but lets be clear  - there are only three groups of people reading this.

a) You are a company talking about doing it (eg – what should be done, what should you do and which channel, advert, partner specific campaign attribution should go to)

b) You are a company doing it right now. ( ‘Real Time Attribution or ‘Applied Attribution’ – making it happen, right now.)

c) You are a competitor(ish) reading our blog posts

Which are you? Talking (Passive) or doing (Applying)?

Hate to tell you (& you can tell the boss) – you are all most likely still in Group A   even though you thought otherwise.    You are talking, not doing.

Humor me…

Even if you have a great SaaS ‘Attribution Management’ vendor with charts that tell you great things.  Even if you have advanced advertising analytics tag(s) that you have installed (at great labor) extensively on all of your pages – you are still looking at ‘what you should have done’ and ‘what should be done’.    It’s all still passive –  It’s not Real-Time reporting.

Those 200 different charts and models in that ‘platform’ who’s tags you have coded on all your pages (how long will you keep those attribution tags there btw?)  – they are not helping you in Real-Time.   That attribution provider that shows you all types of models and reports from the past year about various shares of  profit, revenue, conversions etc…    it’s still not happened.   It is still just ‘passive models’.  Sure – you know something about what is going on, but you are still looking at ‘what you should have done’.  You need to ‘apply’ it now.   Not wait 3 months.

If, like me, you work better on analogies.   Let us look at it this way:

Picture yourself on a plane (unlike me, I’m stuck in the lounge still). You are currently passive.

You open up the inflight magazine and look at the map in the back of where that plane can fly in America and in the world.   You know, that pretty, impressive map that shows every possible route across America. It’s just screaming out colors and ‘impressive routes’.    (cant wait to see that on an ipad)

It would have taken many aviation experts  months to chart those courses (and in many pretty colors, lines and graphics) and many graphic designers worked on making it look nice – but you and all your fellow passengers like me are still not actually at the destination yet.    You are still passive on the Tarmac (most likely O’hare) waiting to take off from point a (where you are sitting passive) to get to b (your destination (applied)).

No matter how many times you look at that map or how many models of that journey (200 different routes in 200 different colors) you look at – you still need to ‘Apply in Real-Time’ a journey.  The journey has not yet happened. You (or the pilot) still need to chose a route, with all the differing variables and make it happen.      You need to ‘Dynamically Apply’ in ‘Real-Time’ the idea of getting from ‘a’ (where you are) to ‘b’ (where you want to be).

Passive_Example

So – are you:

Group a (talking about doing it) (looking at and drawing lots of routes in pretty colors but still on tarmac)

Group b (Doing it right now) (making that journey right now, in Real-Time) (EG, Dynamically Loading Tags and Reporting)

Having one, agnostic tag management solution – that connects all data, connects all partners and ‘serves all tags’ changes your multi-touch attribution results dramatically. The process of “Applied Attribution in Real-Time” assists your business get a competitive edge.    Where many vendors simply provide a company with ‘visual attribution modeling’, because TagMan controls ‘what tags get served, when, why and to who’, it allows advertisers to ‘APPLY Attribution in Real-Time. This means you are saving marketing spend now – not 3 months later.    (You get  to where you want to be now and not sit on the Tarmac for 3 months).  If you were to put that into a monetary perspective and you could make real-time savings and get access to an extra 15% of your budget now to spend elsewhere… not in 3 months time – you can see the competitive advantage.  Our clients can (and do).

Ask your current multi-touch attribution or attribution model provider or even your current lite-tag container provider if they can do this.  They may tell you that you can take your key models and ask your media teams to ‘apply them’, but that defeats the purpose – how long will it take to apply that model?

By managing ‘all tracking tags and vendors’ through one vendor agnostic platform, TagMan offer the built in ‘off the shelf’ ability to enable real time, dynamic attribution awarding and reporting across all marketing service providers including Natural Search and Direct to Site. We allow you to create custom real-time models to instantly remove payments claimed by partners, when you know the catalogue number should get that credit, not an affiliate.    You want to de duplicate that affiliate TODAY, now, in real-time, using complex rules based on cookie window, model etc.    We help to ensure that only the conversion pixel for the MOST RELEVANT partner gets loaded up.  We ensure that you only report on what matters and only pay on what matters .  Your internal reports match your vendor reports and gives you an instant ROI ‘now’, so you have that money to spend elsewhere ‘now’ to grow your business and sales – not in 3 months time when you may get round to it when you’ve finished drawing different pretty routes.

We would love you to ‘apply’ in ‘real-time’ for a demo of TagMan. Drop us an email to find out more.  We are all happy to show you a quick demo and show you case-studies of where clients are saving money and truly on top of Applied Multi-Touch Attribution.

It’s been great being the only agnostic tag platform for marketers and agencies for 3 years; but this new entrance from The BrightTag is good news for TagMan – and the industry.

Why?   Because it proves there is a market ready for vendor agnostic “Tag Management” now in the USA.    It means that Terence Kawaja’s chart  (no matter how hard to pigeon hole a tech) – may have to consider a new box or top row.   In it, could go TagMan, BrightTag and Tealium. Perhaps other great solutions such as Aggregate Knowledge and Demdex would float into it partly; but it would be a box and a market all the same.    A Tag is a Tag is a Tag and all tags need managing, independently without being tied to an ulterior up-sell motive; no matter what the acronym being used and whether it is server-side or browser call, pixel or javascript.  I can’t wait to hear what Terry would call the box, and therefore, the market.

If there is a market – and a box on a chart, it proves true that there is a consistent, genuine need.  A genuine ‘need’ means a line item on a budget sheet.    A line item on a budget means a thorough review of the differing systems, their heritage and experience.

In each experience, there is a very unique, client success story and specific problem that TagMan have solved over the years as our platform has evolved – with references and quotes to say same.  All this, is experience that TagMan are happy to explain and pass on to future clients to save THEM time and $. Indeed, even ‘we’ are still evolving in product AND marketing. EG – I know that @erictpeterson is now bringing me round to the idea that ‘Universal Tag’ is not the correct wording either (a tag is a tag is a tag). Now there is a market forming, I can understand Eric’s thoughts in that area. (You should try to get to the Semphonic Xchange conference if you can)

What this means:   Our experienced marketing, media and technology management , get to take the award winning market leader approach. We get to advise on questions that all advertisers and their agencies should ask of a tag based vendor/partner.

We get to discuss why, through trial and error – we settled on certain pricing models, certain script languages and certain interface and deployment methodologies. Because we have tried them all (ask us about freemium).   We get to talk about our research in this area, the complete list of tags that run through us or integrate with us, why clients talk about us, and why industry bodies feature our clients.

The best of it all -   we get to continue to focus on agnostically helping connect advertisers and agencies to technology vendors; without either falling over due to privacy or data challenges, because more people in our area of interest are helping to grow the market with us.

“Wendy is a proven strategic-thinking, results-oriented professional with years of sales and marketing experience with technology companies and Aaron is experienced in web content management, social computing and measurement, web analytics, document management, personalization/content delivery, and other aspects of enterprise content management,” says Jon Baron, General Manager of TagMan. “They will both be invaluable new members of the TagMan team as we continue to ramp up in the US market.”

Before coming to TagMan, Ms Zenchyshyn had been with Enquisite Search Analytics (San Francisco) as Director of Strategic Partnerships since May 2008 and where she developed strategy including SaaS pricing models and marketing programs to effectively recruit large advertising agencies and direct advertisers focused on search engine marketing. From August 2007 to May 2008, Ms Zenchyshyn was Director, Business Development for Lyris, Inc. managing technology partners whose products were integrated into Lyris’ solutions. Before that, she was for four years Director, Worldwide Channel Sales for ClickTracks Analytics (which was acquired by Lyris, Inc.).

Earlier in her career Ms Zenchyshyn was a Regional Account Manager for WebTrends Corporation; a Channel Sales Manager – International for VPNet Technologies (Avaya); the Director, Global Channel Sales for Mobile Automation, Inc,;  Channel Sales Program Manager for Cisco Systems and spent ten years with Merisel, Inc  in positions of increasing responsibility and authority, the last being Director Worldwide Sales Services, Product and Marketing. She is graduate of Waterloo, Canada’s Wilfrid Laurier University.

Mr. Gragg comes to TagMan from WebTrends (Portland) where he has been a Strategic Account Executive since May 2008 responsible for $4.2 million in software and on demand sales for enterprise web analytics in Southeastern US. Prior to that, he was a Regional Sales Manager for RedDot Solutions/Hummingbird/Open Text from 2004 to 2008 and before that, a Financial Services Practice Manager at Verian Technologies. Earlier in his career, Mr. Gragg was an Account Executive with FileNet Corporation and served in sales and sales management positions with eGrail, Interwoven, Parametric Technology Corporation and the Mars Mission Research Center. He holds Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering from N.C. State University.

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 $41 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 2007, 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.

“As the industry moves forward, with new and emerging platforms, Ave and Tim have the technical skills and expertise we need to develop the TagMan system for our users.  I am delighted to welcome them both as pivotal members of the team,” says Jon Baron, General Manager of TagMan.

Mr. Wrigley is the former head of technology at ITN ON, and was instrumental in developing the online division of broadcaster ITN, into a market leader in video content for web and mobile, supplying all media platforms. Prior to ITN, Mr. Wrigley worked in Speech and Natural Language research for Canon Research Europe, ETL in Japan, and Surrey and Bristol Universities. He has a PhD from Bristol (UK) University.

Prior to TagMan, Mr. Jones, an experienced and skilled manager for IT infrastructure and strategy, was a founding member of digital agency Profero and developed one of the fastest 3rd party ad server solutions within Europe. He was also a member of the New Media Advisory Board for Comic Relief, developing campaigns for Comic Relief and Live8.

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.

1)Tags really do slow down your page

The slowest-loading assets on site pages in our study were tracking tags, taking as much as 250ms. Based on our study, a delay of around one second causes approximately 10% of users to abandon the page, suggesting that four tags on the page could lose you 10% of your visitors.

2)Tag position needs careful consideration

If page load speeds are slow then very different figures will be reported depending on where tags are placed and the relative effect of the tag will be far less.In our test, hecklerspray.com achieved a 20% increase in the traffic reported by Google Anayltics when the tag was placed at the top of the page, which would be a good argument to put the code higher up the page.

3)Page optimisation is critical

The rate at which users abandon slow pages underlines the need to ensure they are written with a view to loading as quickly as possible. Both sites in the test contained third-party analytics tags that were no longer in use. An easy place to start would be to identify any tags that are no longer in use and remove them.

4)IFrame container tags suffer the most

The worst performing method of including tags in the page was via an invisible iFrame at the bottom of the page – the method used by the major container-tag solutions. The tests showed the most effective way to collect data is by using a blank JavaScript call, particularly if the tracking code is placed at the end of the page.

There’s a summary of the findings here and, to get a copy of the full report, complete with all the results and the code Paul used to run the test, email us at contact@tagman.com

TagMan’s unique tag management solution that allows marketing and IT teams take control of tagging and also provides CPA de-duplication across all marketing channels has beaten off tough competition to win the awards.

Recognition of the innovative approach that TagMan has to digital marketing is always pleasing to receive, especially from well respected industry professionals.

The awards recognize genuine innovation and success in the digital marketplace and TagMan’s unique container tag solution that provides simplicity and control in terms of tag management and also CPA de-duplication across all marketing channels has made it through to the final.

We are looking forward to the announcement of the winner on 2^nd December with bated breath, watch this space!

TagMan gets a mention as a solution for tag management issues so it seems that not only is it addressing a real current industry need, but also word has spread to key industry thinkers such as Ian.

Thanks for the plug Ian, especially appreciated due to it being totally unexpected, it’s definitely a very informative post with some great ideas for the way forward.