Google Tag Manager vs. StackAdapt

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

StackAdapt's programmatic buys are great for a quick awareness campaign to reach the most eyeballs. Solid user segmentation from 3rd party sources that is available almost immediately. The platform is less proficient at converting users, though I've never had sufficient volume to test if this works better for enterprise-level clients with more conversion data

Incentivized

• 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

• Audience targeting - there are so many options for both B2C and B2B audiences, from browsing behavior audiences to account-based marketing audiences to CRM lists. There's a way to find your ideal audience no matter their industry.
• Pixel setup and management are pretty easy. It uses a universal pixel that you can easily place on your site. We use Google Tag Manager for this. Then, you can create any number of conversion events and easily implement them, also with Google Tag Manager, so we can trust we're getting good tracking.
• It seems many display ad platforms lack optimization tools, but StackAdapt makes it easy to adjust, add, or remove audiences, pause certain website categories, exclude batches of websites, pause individual ads, and really fine-tune the targeting as you see what works and what doesn't.

Incentivized

• 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

• There has been occasional slopping maintenance of the campaigns, and we have to follow up with questions about spending spikes or significant changes in delivery CPMs.
• Account rep knowledge can sometimes be lacking. When we question our reps about performance, we sometimes get confusing or nonsensical answers.
• The reporting UI is definitely clunky and unintuitive.

Incentivized

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

The platform is easy to use and understand whether it is being used as self-serve or a managed service. The audience targeting is solid, and array of placements is versatile. With these, the level of engagement for video content is usually great

Incentivized

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

It is very user friendly and if any team members need further help, we are able to easily access their customer service team for hands on assistance with an actual human being, not a robot. Their team has been incredibly kind, understanding and thorough. It is really a great all in one tool for a business who relies greatly on advertising campaigns.

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

Support has been exceptional. Our dedicated team is always available and ready to answer any questions that may arise. We receive updates from them on a regular basis and they go above and beyond providing assistance when needed. The team is absolutely one of the bright spots in our relationship with StackAdapt

Incentivized

I thought there was a little bit too much emphasis on AdWords stuff, not enough on the generic application of GTM.

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

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

StackAdapt is significantly less expensive than The Trade Desk. StackAdapt doesn't have campaign minimums, unlike The Trade Desk, meaning you can experiment with a lower ad spend to gain client confidence before investing at a larger level. Plus they don't lock you into an annual contract or anything long term. It feels very similar to The Trade Desk but without the high contract.

Incentivized

• 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

• Excellent traffic from our ads. Traffic exceeded our forecast.
• Excellent management of our budget. We did not spend near as much as we budgeted for the response we received through our test.
• The lead conversion was not expected to be high due to the type of content we deployed, but we received zero conversions, well below anticipated when compared to other ads for the same content.

Incentivized