Tealium iQ Aims to Put Marketers in Control of Page Tags

Product helps marketers consolidate sprawling tags and wrest control from overworked IT departments.

Tealium has released a self-service solution that lets marketers manage page tags, the bits of JavaScript that let them target, measure and manage campaigns. The company says its iQ tag management system helps marketers consolidate their sprawling tags and wrest control from overworked IT departments.

Tag management systems replace the individual JavaScript tags provided by ad servers, affiliates, analytics vendors and others with one master tag, the content of which is generated on the fly. Instead of a page cluttered with invisible-to-the-human-eye JavaScript elements that automatically send data back to their respective companies, the “universal tag” identifies which third parties should receive data and inserts only the relevant data.

Tealium has provided tag management for three years; iQ will allow marketers to do more customization on their own, without the need for professional services, according to Ali Behnam, Tealium co-founder.

Users can set rules for tags from different vendors, such as when the tag loads and what data it contains. In essence, according to Behnam, iQ acts as a content management system, managing the content of the tags.

Tealium’s level of customization can serve other business needs as well, Behnam says. For example, a large financial services client of the company uses Tealium iQ to strip out sensitive information such as social security numbers that users of its website might enter into a search box before sending the data to its third-party site analytics vendor.

“There are all these little gotchas, and who would have thought about these? ” Behnam says. “Tealium iQ allows our customers to manage those complexities on their own.”

Tealium’s customers include Cisco Systems, Dreamworks, Advance Auto Parts, Orange, and FingerHut. Behnam says the company’s sweet spot is allowing customers to manage multiple campaigns and tags. One customer manages 70 tags; the average customer manages between 20 and 30.

Tealium competes with Ensighten, TagMan, BrightTag, and SiteTagger. Behnam says his company differentiates itself by the level of customization available, ease of use and analytics integration.

In a 2010 report, Forrester analyst Joe Stanhope wrote that the battle to implement and maintain tags puts marketing, measurement, and site effectiveness at risk. He also noted that IT departments struggle to keep up with requests to change and manage tags. Stanhope wrote that tag management systems are the most viable option for enterprises.

The larger and more complex the website, the bigger the problem, according to Behnam. Marketing campaigns don’t follow standard release cycles. 

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