Item: Google Tag Manager
Rating: 10
Author: Benjamin Hale

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Google Tag Manager (GTM) throughout our organization to place and keep track of all our tracking scripts and pixels on our landing and micro websites. This has solved may issues for us when it comes to adding, changing and allowing others to modify tracking scripts on our websites. Most of our websites have multiple tracking scripts, and Tag Manager gives us a single place to keep tabs on them. An, with the option to create variables and different triggers, we can add these elements to our tracking systems and ultimately to our data warehouse and reports.

Pros and Cons

Versioning is great on GTM. This allows us to review changes made in the past, if something isn't working correctly in our reporting systems or conversion tracking systems.
The preview mode is now used often to ensure that tags are being fired at the right time and on the correct pages. This means we don't have to create a bunch of test leads and then verify the data is showing in the reporting.
Integrated tags make it quick to add tracking for Analytics and AdWords, and simple HTML tags have a place as well.
Just today, I was able to export all the variables and tags from one landing page, and upload it into a new landing page. Then easily modify the few tags that changed, and my job was done. This would have been much more tedious if I were using a manual system.

It would be nice to have GTM integrate more tracking pixels into is template system.
Moving containers from one account to another could be easier.
Maybe a desktop client could be nice as well.

Return on Investment

We save untold amounts of time managing and maintaining website tracking with GTM.
Having a permission based access system helps us allow our partners create or modify tags when we allow it. This saves us time and resources.
Versioning has saved us more than once when mistakes have been made on changing or adding tags.

Alternatives Considered

Segment

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 of Google's tools, made it the clear choice.

Other Software Used

Google Analytics, Kenshoo Infinity Suite, AdWords, Bing Ads, Yahoo Gemini, Mouseflow, ion interactive

Likelihood to Recommend

For most websites that desire tracking, Google Tag Manager is the way to go. Apparently, there is even GTM for mobile application, although I haven't looked at this part of it. The only time I would consider not looking into GTM is for websites that need to be overly quick in loading, and cannot afford to have the little bit of overhead that GTM adds to a page load.

Is there any reason not to use this software?

Overall Satisfaction with Google Tag Manager