Tag Management Hits the Big Time

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A few days ago Google announced a "tag management" tool. For those who may wonder at the meaning of this esoteric term, it can be illustrated as follows:

In pursuit of more accurate tracking of website usage, the digital marketing industry has come to rely on snippets of JavaScript embedded in the HTML of every measured page ("tags"). Each view of that page triggers data collection based on the presence of the JavaScript. Missing or incorrect tags can corrupt and invalidate reporting on web usage.

Tag creation and placement has become complex and time consuming. Expertise in tagging is not common. Continuing audits of tagging is recommended but less frequent than it should be.

Hence, the field of tag management. Several companies including Tealium, Ensighten, and TagMan have emerged to meet the market need.

Now, Google has taken notice, as noted above.

When Google came out with Google Analytics, it made web analytics almost a household name among marketers. While targeted mostly at smaller businesses, the offering was good enough for many and created a much larger ecosphere for analytics generally. Since that time Google has only improved its analytics offering and has added a premium version targeted at the enterprise. This has driven the digital analytics market to expand into more and more sophisticated territory: in brief, toward more universal measurement of data that Google at this point does not see fit to offer for free.

Google's tag management solution promises to do the same for tagging. It is likely to provide a tool for managing Google Analytics tags in the small-to-medium-sized market, while giving the field of tag management the higher profile it deserves.

It may also drive changes in the tag management space, much as it has in the older and more established web analytics industry. Web analytics companies are focusing on more integrated measurement offerings. Some new entrants are pulling data from non-web-based sources and combining online and offline data into common dashboards.

Much of this is in response to customers requesting better decision-making tools. But part of it is because Google has done much to take away the traditional footprint of the digital analytics market.

Tag management tools now become much more motivated to innovate: going where free tools won't. It is a familiar pattern, and digital marketers are sure to benefit.