A tag management system such as Google Tag Manager is a central management tool that allows you deploy marketing tags (marketing tags are little pieces of JavaScript code that you install on your website in order to transfer data to a marketing tool) easily and more efficiently by allowing two departments (technical & marketing) to work simultaneously and in greater collaboration.
How does it work and why use Google Tag Manager?
Before tag management systems were in the public domain, you’d have to individually add different tags on your site i.e. Google Analytics, Adwords, AdRoll, PPC marketing solutions and behavioural retargeters that increases the chances of errors and also slow page loading.
Nowadays with the aid tag management solutions such as GTM, all you need to do is implement a container snippet on your website which will allow easy management of all solutions. Google Tag Manager is one of the most popular solutions because it’s completely free and works well with other google products such as Adwords and Google Analytics.
GTM is purely JavaScript which also allows the firing of tagging solutions to be asynchronous, this is a plus as it can help speed up your page loading time.
But how would I manage all this JavaScript nonsense?
Firstly don’t panic, GTM is extremely user friendly and provides you with a graphical user interface where you can easily manage your tags, there are certain capabilities and functionalities that can streamline the process of deploying these tags to your site and managing the data tracked. There are also added features such as variables, templates, version control access and debugging.
Is Google the only company offering this service?
No, there is a broad spectrum of tag management solutions out there at the moment, some of which are a lot more complicated and specific for user needs. Here are some of the other players: TagMan, DoubleClick, Qubit, Adobe Tag Management, Segment, Tag Commander, Tealium and Ensighten. The last two are highlighted as they are more enterprise editions that can do a lot more on the server side and are not limited to just JavaScript functionality, however do incur a cost to use.
Does Awin support GTM?
The answer is yes, Awin has launched its tag solution on GTM which allows for faster and easier implementation of merchants tracking code onto their site. You can find a step by step instructional guide here.
