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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Google Tag Manager

    Score9.5 out of 10
    N/AFrom 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

    Microsoft Advertising

    Score7.7 out of 10
    N/AMicrosoft Advertising (formerly Bing Ads) contains Microsoft's advertising solutions. Advertising formats include search (Microsoft Search ads), Display and Native ads, Retail Media, and Video and Connected TV (CTV) ads. Services include Performance Max, the company's conversion optimization AI assistant and guide.N/A
    Pricing
    Google Tag ManagerMicrosoft Advertising
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Google Tag ManagerMicrosoft Advertising
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Google Tag ManagerMicrosoft Advertising
    Considered Both Products
    Google
    Chose Google Tag Manager
    As far as I know, Google Tag Manager is the only program that provides this service.
    Incentivized
    Chose Google Tag Manager
    Google was free, powerful to use, and easy to pick up. We couldn't find any better reason to use it. I am sure there are advantages that some of the competitors have in the space, but for us, the ability to manage users and keep versions of changes, along with the familiarity …
    Incentivized
    Microsoft
    Chose Microsoft Advertising
    Bing is not quite as good as Google, but it is lightyears ahead of where Yahoo Gemini was. It's a fantastic platform if the client has enough money to support it.
    Incentivized
    Chose Microsoft Advertising
    We use Google Ads, Amazon Advertising and Bing Ads. Amazon has the best return for us by far, but Bing Ads outperforms Google Ads for us. Google obviously reaches many more people than Bing, but we are a traditional company working on MER/ROAS. We will continue to use Bing Ads.
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    93%
    Would buy again
    14 Answers
    68%
    Would buy again
    21 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    14 Answers
    70%
    Delivers good value for the price
    21 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    15 Answers
    65%
    Happy with the feature set
    20 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    11 Answers
    59%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    17 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    93%
    Implementation went as expected
    13 Answers
    67%
    Implementation went as expected
    20 Answers
    Features
    Google Tag ManagerMicrosoft Advertising
    Security
    Comparison of Security features of Google Tag Manager and Microsoft Advertising
    Feature
    Google Tag Manager
    8.9
    58 Ratings
    5% above category average
    Microsoft Advertising
    -
    Ratings
    Role-based user permissions8.958 Ratings00 Ratings
    Tag Management
    Comparison of Tag Management features of Google Tag Manager and Microsoft Advertising
    Feature
    Google Tag Manager
    8.8
    68 Ratings
    8% above category average
    Microsoft Advertising
    -
    Ratings
    Tag library9.263 Ratings00 Ratings
    Tag variable mapping8.955 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ease of writing custom tags7.367 Ratings00 Ratings
    Rules-driven tag execution8.162 Ratings00 Ratings
    Tag performance monitoring10.056 Ratings00 Ratings
    Page load times8.849 Ratings00 Ratings
    Mobile app tagging9.334 Ratings00 Ratings
    Library of JavaScript extensions8.838 Ratings00 Ratings
    Data Management & Integrity
    Comparison of Data Management & Integrity features of Google Tag Manager and Microsoft Advertising
    Feature
    Google Tag Manager
    7.6
    69 Ratings
    7% below category average
    Microsoft Advertising
    -
    Ratings
    Event tracking8.666 Ratings00 Ratings
    Mobile event tracking9.447 Ratings00 Ratings
    Data distribution management8.841 Ratings00 Ratings
    Universal data layer8.358 Ratings00 Ratings
    Automated error checking3.045 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ad Campaigns
    Comparison of Ad Campaigns features of Google Tag Manager and Microsoft Advertising
    Feature
    Google Tag Manager
    -
    Ratings
    Microsoft Advertising
    6.5
    6 Ratings
    0% above category average
    Ad campaign creation00 Ratings8.06 Ratings
    Ad deployment00 Ratings8.36 Ratings
    Display advertising00 Ratings6.46 Ratings
    Ad display and retargeting segmentation00 Ratings6.46 Ratings
    Sequence targeting00 Ratings5.95 Ratings
    Contextual advertising00 Ratings5.56 Ratings
    Social advertising00 Ratings4.95 Ratings
    Ad Reporting & Analytics
    Comparison of Ad Reporting & Analytics features of Google Tag Manager and Microsoft Advertising
    Feature
    Google Tag Manager
    -
    Ratings
    Microsoft Advertising
    6.6
    8 Ratings
    4% below category average
    Ad dashboards00 Ratings6.28 Ratings
    Ad performance reports00 Ratings6.87 Ratings
    Ad conversion tracking00 Ratings7.36 Ratings
    Ad attribution reporting00 Ratings7.06 Ratings
    Ad forecasting and optimization00 Ratings5.85 Ratings
    Ad Auctions
    Comparison of Ad Auctions features of Google Tag Manager and Microsoft Advertising
    Feature
    Google Tag Manager
    -
    Ratings
    Microsoft Advertising
    7.3
    7 Ratings
    14% below category average
    Ad bidding00 Ratings7.37 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Google Tag ManagerMicrosoft Advertising
    Small Businesses
    Adobe Experience Platform Launch
    Score8.4 out of 10
    WordStream
    Score6.9 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Adobe Experience Platform Launch
    Score8.4 out of 10
    WordStream
    Score6.9 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Adobe Dynamic Tag Management (discontinued)
    Score10 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Google Tag ManagerMicrosoft Advertising
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.7
    (73 ratings)
    7.4
    (70 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    7.0
    (7 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Usability
    7.1
    (18 ratings)
    7.9
    (4 ratings)
    Availability
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    2.0
    (12 ratings)
    9.1
    (11 ratings)
    Online Training
    7.3
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    9.8
    (2 ratings)
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Google Tag ManagerMicrosoft Advertising
    Likelihood to Recommend
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    Despite using our account for advertising with every other social media company, Microsoft flagged ours as fraudulent. After dealing with them for weeks, we finally got to a manager, who said that they didn’t know anything, couldn’t provide any information, and was unable to do anything about it. It seems odd, but it would flagger account every time we try to upload the campaigns from Google directly into their ad manager. I would suggest if you try and use their platform, don’t tell them you’re using Google cause they seem to have a thing against it. Once your account is flagged, they have no reasonable way of resolving it, nor they are able to offer any support. You’re better off to just try a different way. Ultimately, just don’t use Microsoft advertising if you can possibly avoid it. Hopefully soon DuckDuckGo will have their own advertising platform and we can eliminate Microsoft given the terrible time we have working with this one of many, social media platforms.
    Read full review
    Pros
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • Familiar interface, offers editor for bulk changes, adding negative keywords is much easier than in Google Ads
    • Nice reporting tools within the interface, detailed reports can be made fairly easily
    • Had very nice tools to help import/export ads directly from Google Ads, which saves a ton of time
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • Bing's ad platform could definitely use some improvements - it hasn't been updated in a long time, and it feels very outdated.
    • We feel that the optimization algorithms don't always perform as well for Bing Ads as they do in Google Ads (optimize for conversions, etc.).
    • It would be great to have even more integrations with LinkedIn audience targeting offered - right now, you can just make some bid optimizations in a couple of areas; we'd really like to get more robust options there, and maybe even things like cross-platform tracking.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    We have had good success with it over all of our clients. We continually recommend bing to reach "the rest of the searchers".
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    It's very easy to use overall. It has an import from Google Ads to make things simpler. Overall, I would say you can get up and running very quickly. It's similar to other platforms, so if you have used them, it's intuitive.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    Our Bing Ads reps are very good and attentive. They've offered good recommendations and are quick to resolve unexpected issues and problems. Occasionally they have roped in technical support folks that have been friendly and helpful too. The general helpline for Bing Ads is also very good, especially when compared to Google's customer support.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Online Training
    Google
    I thought there was a little bit too much emphasis on AdWords stuff, not enough on the generic application of GTM.
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    Obviously Google is a huge competitor. Typically Google is top of the game for many advertising solutions including search. Microsoft ads has a lower scale and reach compared to Google. However, Microsoft ads audience does not overlap much with Googles, providing incremental reach. Although Microsoft ads lags a bit behind in adapting the new updates that Google comes out with, their customer service is very good and they are likely to go out of their way to adapt their platform to your needs whereas their competitor does not
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • We've had a very hard time spending our budgets on Bing which has caused us a lot of extra work on our end. We've essentially had to move that money back to Google or other platforms.
    • It does have an easy import from Google so you're not doubling efforts.
    • The CPCs tend to be less expensive than Google - which is always good for business owners.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots