Google Tag Manager vs. TransUnion TruAudience

I use Google Tag Manager (GTM) daily and create tags/triggers for all of our client's websites. It is easy to set up but for some of my tasks, the process does get repetitive so it'd be nice to have a default setting I can use when I have to create accounts, and then tweak/add things to them as needed. It is a great way to collect data and have code on the site without having to log into the site builder all the time. It makes it convenient to make edits or add code after our client's sites go live with us.

Incentivized

Well suited to campaigns and smaller task teams of less than 100. For these sizes, the group conversations work well, and the ability to search conversations and multimedia is perfect for finding previous information. For larger groups, information could very easily get lost, and requires a break-up into groups that would defeat the purpose of such a group chat.

• 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

• Populating your library with new tags is simple whether you're duplicating an existing tag or creating an entirely new one.
• Creating the firing conditions for a tag.
• Adding users to different groups with limited or full admin permissions.
• If you know JavaScript, you shouldn't have an issue with assigning values to the proper variables once your data layer is set up for each page and/or action.

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

• Placing quotes around variable names in the Tag Attributes, but not in the Event Handlers has caused me to mess up more than once.
• Being able to search the account for all instances of certain text would be very helpful (e.g., search for s.eVar30 to find all places where I set that SiteCatalyst variable).

Incentivized

Google Tag Manager makes tracking traffic to our websites effortless, which enables our developers to focus on other tasks. Setting up a new instance takes only minutes and additional scripts can be added/modified without touching the source code of a site in production. This enables our marketing directors to coordinate tests and experiments with minimal effort.

Incentivized

Because of all of the previous benefits that I mentioned, GM has mandated that any DSP that we use for their campaigns must be integrated with BrightTag. Therefore we will have to use BrightTag for all future GM business

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

Based on the features and current usage. It shows some buggy pages plus the service and support is really very slow. The updates are not regular and company needs to work on that. The usability is good and reporting of tags is accurate which is the best part. The pricing of the product is good and can be used by organizations of all sizes.

Incentivized

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 is really slow and it takes days to resolve an issue. Plus we have to inquire regularly for the status of resolution. Company should definitely work towards that

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

Most of the tag solutions I've worked with were not nearly as robust. Most systems will let you load another tag not directly placed on the site, but none provide all the different firing levers that BT does

• 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

• Wonderful for ensuring we meet our logistical and record-keeping requirements
• Negative at being the best at quality-of-life options, like specific muting
• Great at allowing a casual work environment in having chats for memes, pets, etc.