Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform vs. Google Tag Manager

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Adobe Real-Time CDP
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Adobe's Real-Time Customer Data Platform allows marketers to collect, normalize, and unify known and pseudonymous consumer and professional data into real-time profiles. These person or account-based profiles then power B2B, B2C, and hybrid customer experiences at scale.N/A
Google Tag Manager
Score 9.4 out of 10
N/A
From Google, the Google Tag Manager is a tag management application that facilitates creating, embedding, and updating tags across websites and mobile apps. It is a free option, vs. the company's enterprise-tier Google Tag Manager 360.
$0
Pricing
Adobe Real-Time Customer Data PlatformGoogle Tag Manager
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Adobe Real-Time CDPGoogle Tag Manager
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional DetailsAdobe offers three tiers of Real-Time CDP tailored for any type of business wanting to power their customer experience management strategy with unified customer data. The Business-to-Consumer Edition is for B2C brands wanting to personalize experiences for consumers. The Business-to-Business Edition is for B2B brands wanting to personalize experiences for leads and accounts. The Business-to-Person Edition is for combined B2C and B2B brands wanting to personalize experiences for the same person across all lines of business.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Adobe Real-Time Customer Data PlatformGoogle Tag Manager
Features
Adobe Real-Time Customer Data PlatformGoogle Tag Manager
Tag Management
Comparison of Tag Management features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform
7.7
25 Ratings
6% below category average
Google Tag Manager
8.7
68 Ratings
7% above category average
Tag library7.724 Ratings9.063 Ratings
Ease of writing custom tags7.524 Ratings7.067 Ratings
Rules-driven tag execution7.924 Ratings7.962 Ratings
Tag performance monitoring7.622 Ratings10.056 Ratings
Page load times7.722 Ratings8.749 Ratings
Mobile app tagging7.622 Ratings9.434 Ratings
Tag variable mapping00 Ratings8.955 Ratings
Library of JavaScript extensions00 Ratings8.738 Ratings
Audience Segmentation & Targeting
Comparison of Audience Segmentation & Targeting features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform
8.3
28 Ratings
2% above category average
Google Tag Manager
-
Ratings
Standard visitor segmentation8.328 Ratings00 Ratings
Behavioral visitor segmentation8.228 Ratings00 Ratings
Website personalization8.327 Ratings00 Ratings
Customer Data Management
Comparison of Customer Data Management features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform
7.8
30 Ratings
5% below category average
Google Tag Manager
-
Ratings
Account Scoring7.925 Ratings00 Ratings
Customer Data Governance8.028 Ratings00 Ratings
Data Connectors8.029 Ratings00 Ratings
Data Enhancement7.329 Ratings00 Ratings
Data Ingestion8.229 Ratings00 Ratings
Data Storage7.829 Ratings00 Ratings
Data Visibility7.429 Ratings00 Ratings
Event Data8.229 Ratings00 Ratings
Identity Resolution7.528 Ratings00 Ratings
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform
-
Ratings
Google Tag Manager
8.7
58 Ratings
4% above category average
Role-based user permissions00 Ratings8.758 Ratings
Data Management & Integrity
Comparison of Data Management & Integrity features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform
-
Ratings
Google Tag Manager
7.6
69 Ratings
7% below category average
Event tracking00 Ratings8.666 Ratings
Mobile event tracking00 Ratings9.247 Ratings
Data distribution management00 Ratings8.841 Ratings
Universal data layer00 Ratings8.258 Ratings
Automated error checking00 Ratings3.045 Ratings
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Adobe Real-Time Customer Data PlatformGoogle Tag Manager
Small Businesses
Bloomreach
Bloomreach
Score 9.2 out of 10
Adobe Experience Platform Launch
Adobe Experience Platform Launch
Score 8.2 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Bloomreach
Bloomreach
Score 9.2 out of 10
Adobe Experience Platform Launch
Adobe Experience Platform Launch
Score 8.2 out of 10
Enterprises
Bloomreach
Bloomreach
Score 9.2 out of 10
Tealium Customer Data Hub
Tealium Customer Data Hub
Score 8.5 out of 10
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User Ratings
Adobe Real-Time Customer Data PlatformGoogle Tag Manager
Likelihood to Recommend
8.1
(29 ratings)
9.6
(73 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.6
(29 ratings)
7.0
(7 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(29 ratings)
7.2
(18 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
2.0
(12 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.8
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
Adobe Real-Time Customer Data PlatformGoogle Tag Manager
Likelihood to Recommend
Adobe
In any scenario where we have a unique offline and online 'Person ID,' we are able to see great results with profile stitching within CDP. In cases where we do not have a unique Person ID between datasets, we find ourselves at a point where we would need to change our architecture to have the same Person ID to see results.
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Google
I have found Google Tag Manager as the go to solution for managing all of your event and conversion tags for your website. Not only does it make it easy to manage all of your tags in the one place, it is fairly intuitive to use and there is plenty of videos and help documentation online to help set up what ever you need. No scenarios come to mind at the moment on where it is less appropriate to use.
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Pros
Adobe
  • Real time segmentation and profiling on high volume of customer data
  • Integration of various customer data sources, ranging from CRM, Web Analytics, EDL and other custom sources
  • Data governance of customer data in the platform, down to attribute based access controls
  • Activation across paid media, marketing automation and experience optimization platforms
  • Easy to use interface for marketers
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Google
  • Selecting elements on a site [object, class, cookie, etc] (to later fire an event, send some data, etc) is very easy with triggers. Want to add an event when someone clicks on a button? Super easy. It was many many DOM selectors and you can even add custom functions if you need to do something more specific
  • In general, firing events in different circumstances is very easy mixing triggers and tags. You can track almost any element of the DOM and do whatever you want with it.
  • Testing is a great functionality. Only you can see what's on the site and you can debug it easily by seeing which events or tags were triggered and all the DOM elements involved (and why they matched the trigger).
  • Working in environments (staging, production) and versioning is easy to do, deploying changes in 2 clicks.
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Cons
Adobe
  • Some features that are not yet released to all customers are necessary to manage cases like device sharing
  • The methodology of how data is stored and manage is relatively unique and requires some ramp-up to fully understand
  • There are some areas, like deduplication, where the platform doesn't provide the flexibility one would expect
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Google
  • There are several good integrations, but there can always be more. Native tracking for call tracking solutions, analytics providers, non-Google advertisers would be top of my list.
  • Documentation is just dreadful. Luckily there are some awesome folks out there doing crowdsourced tutorials (shout out to Simo Ahava) but by and large the Google Tag Manager instructions are worth what you pay for them.
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Likelihood to Renew
Adobe
It helps faster deal cycles, higher win rated and a lot better prioritisation of leads. The churn rate is low this leads to a higher lifetime value. All decisions are now impacted with the real time data provided by Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform. It is very useful in increasing average revenue per customer hence this rating is well justified for the product
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Google
I haven't found another option for us to use especially one that is free. Down the road we may go a different route but for now GTM is a good option and does what we need it to do. It'd be nice to get more support or more integrations but with the free version there's only so much one can expect to get I suppose.
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Usability
Adobe
Activation - great Segmentation - in UI, there should be the possibility of writing advanced code Tags. Both Mobile and Desktop Data Ingestion - might be pain in the ass. Changing one customer attribute is time-consuming. It should be some super admin or some feature. One user can change some customers' attributes easily. Data Transformation - Maybe there are some modules for that in AJO?
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Google
No difficult obstacle to overcome but Google Tag Manager can still be difficult for many users to deploy. Sure the basic HTML script can be deployed quite easily, but when you start to require triggers, variables, etc, it can be a little daunting.
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Support Rating
Adobe
No answers on this topic
Google
GTM does not provide support. This is one of GTM's biggest issues but it's due to the level of customization for each website. If your team thinks they would heavily rely on the need for a support staff it is probably better to invest in a paid service with a team that can support your needs.
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Online Training
Adobe
No answers on this topic
Google
I thought there was a little bit too much emphasis on AdWords stuff, not enough on the generic application of GTM.
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Implementation Rating
Adobe
No answers on this topic
Google
Planning and communication will help greatly with an in-house implementation. If there are large teams, try to limit the number of people involved to 1-2 developers (back-end dev may be necessary depending on your platform), one analytics marketer and one project manager.
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Alternatives Considered
Adobe
Real time access of data Very popular so no need of marketing Customer profiles are updated immediately and easy to access multiple customer data Apt for both business to customers and business to business accounts Maintains strong focus on customer growth and standard profiles Privacy and confidentiality is better when compared to other customer data profile softwares
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Google
We moved to GTM from a standard Google Analytics implementation. GTM is much more flexible and easier to make changes, especially as the changes relate to multiple sites and environments. While there is a learning curve when figuring out how to use GTM, I believe the change has been worth it because it helps us understand at a more fundamental level how our tracking works and gives us a lot more control over what we track and how.
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Return on Investment
Adobe
  • Improved ability to target users across different marketing DSPs
  • Increased click and conversion rate for Adobe Target
  • Lowered opt out and bounce rates for email
  • Decreased time to value on audience segmentation
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Google
  • GTM is very useful to determine if a particular element on the site is useful (i.e. is it being watched, is it being clicked, does it help customers navigate through more pages). As an SEO person, I can use this information to decide what to optimize for but also to track progress and see improvements in engagement.
  • With the use of Google Tag Manager, I was able to easily inject an A/B testing tool which lead to several improvements in lead generation.
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ScreenShots

Adobe Real-Time CDP Screenshots

Screenshot of Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform Profiles by Data SourceScreenshot of Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform Profiles and SegmentsScreenshot of Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform Customer ProfileScreenshot of Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform Scoring Summary