Asynchronous Tagging

No Comments » Written on October 24th, 2011 by
Categories: tag management
Tags: , , , ,

One of the many methods through which Tealium improves site performance is by using asynchronous loading of tags. This method is becoming increasing popular, especially after Google’s adoption of asynchronous tags in 2010 for its analytics product. Tealium is one of the pioneers in asynchronous tracking, first adopting the methodology for tag management back in 2008.

But what exactly is asynchronous tracking and how does it improve site performance?

Before explaining the asynchronous method, it is important to note how tags load and why they slow down web sites. Most tags today are loaded in synchronous manner (think serial). When a page loads a synchronous tag, it waits for the tag content to load before moving on to the next content. The figure below shows an example of a page loading 4 tags in a synchronous or serial manner. The page starts by loading the first tag. After the tag has been completely loaded, the page moves on the second tag. The process is then repeated for the ensuing tags. Assuming each tag takes half a second to load, we’re looking at a total load time of 2 seconds to load all 4 tags.

Synchronous tags

Synchronous Tag Loading

With asynchronous tracking, the browser can load the different tags in parallel. It no longer has to wait for a certain tag to load completely before moving on to the next or the rest of the page content. This is shown in the figure below. Using our example of the page with 4 tags, we can see that the browser starts downloading the 4 tags in parallel, completing the process much faster. The 4 tags in this case are completed in a fraction of a time compared to the synchronous method.

Asynchronous tag loading

Asynchronous Tag Loading

Asynchronous tracking has many benefits. One obvious benefit is improved site performance, as demonstrated above. Another benefit is improved tracking and data accuracy.  Because tags are loading in parallel to the rest of the content, they can be placed on top of the page, which improves the accuracy of data being collected.

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Attribution and Tag Management, Just Like Peanut Butter & Mustard

No Comments » Written on October 17th, 2011 by
Categories: digital marketing, tag management, Universal Tag
Tags: ,

There are always those strange anomalies that occur in any new space, Tag Management is no exception. When I first joined the race this year I noticed that for some reason evaluators of the Tag Management space would many times throw in Attribution to the tail end of their requirements like some sort of non-permitted guest room to their house.  I decided to dig deeper into why this was occurring by speaking with prospects as well as other vendors in the space.

As it would suggest, customer journey is something that CAN be tracked as a side benefit from Tag Management, admittedly some of Tealium’s customers request data feeds and reporting on customer journey.  The problem occurs when customers start to request the real attribution metrics and reporting, that’s where us Tag Management providers fall short. At the heart of attribution is the understanding of where marketers should spend their advertising budget, determining which channels are most effective, which ones are providing proper contributions to conversions, and how they relate to each other. This is an area specialized by enterprise Attribution vendors with years of experience, best practices and access to the financial data necessary to make such decisions.

By attempting to bolt on Attribution (and who knows what else) as a key component to their solution Tag Management companies will find they are missing the boat when it comes to Enterprise Tag Management. Likewise companies looking to evaluate Tag Management providers will be forced to settle with a sub-par platform in order to try and procure an ‘all in one’ tool (a ‘worst of both worlds’ scenario if you will). I believe that relying on the wonderfully evolved Ecosystem and remaining fully Agnostic will create a long and lasting partnership between the Tag Management vendor and those customers committed to realizing the full potential of what that they offer.  Just my 2 cents, and with that Ali, tag you’re it!

Technology Inspiration

4 comments Written on October 7th, 2011 by
Categories: Uncategorized

I’m interrupting the current blog schedule to reflect on the news coming out of the technology sector. I’m talking about the passing of Steve Jobs.

I never actually met Steve, and I never had the pleasure to work for him. I’m purely a technology geek that has had my life changed by the myriad of wonderful products championed by Steve.

I was late to Apple, my first Apple product was the original iPhone. I loved it, and it’s still a viable gadget today. That purchase lead me to my second, a MacBook Pro. Since then Apple keyboards, Magic Mice, Trackpads, Airport Extremes, Apple TV’s (2), Mac Mini’s (4 – two for me and one for each of my parents), another Macbook Pro, a Macbook (for my sister), an iMac, a 30″ Cinema display, 3 shuffles, an iTouch, an iPhone 3 and two iPhone 4′s. I even purchased a Lenovo Netbook because someone figured out how to install OSX on it. I haven’t let go of a single device, and I don’t know that I will…They all seem so viable, and for whatever reason, I’ve connected with all of them at some point in time.

The Apple platform has morphed the way I do my day to day operations, and as a result standard Tealium issue to new employees is a MacBook Pro. The Apple design philosophy has also been ingrained in the way we design products here at Tealium.

It’s hard to miss someone you’ve never met, but I am sad knowing he’s no longer out there building things that inspire me. My sincerest condolences go out to his family and friends as I know his departure leaves a tremendous void.  I look forward to meeting him in the afterlife – mainly to get my hands on whatever he’s been working on.

Take baby steps or How size really does matter

No Comments » Written on September 13th, 2011 by
Categories: product management

The most useful lesson I’ve learned in the past 15 months: take baby steps.  Break down projects, implementations, et cetera into the smallest digestible tasks.  From the creative business sponsor to a heads-down developer; it simply makes life easier to manage, which allows you to complete projects faster and you can even argue it reduces your cost per feature.

I gained an incredible amount of experience using various development methodologies and techniques over my 10+ years working for bestbuy.com.  Starting off the 21st century I was using “the dreaded waterfall” methodology.  More recently I was involved in many “agile” projects.  Now I’m promoting more lean techniques.  Since joining Tealium, I have been involved with installing Tealium on well over 100 websites managing over 2,000 installed tags combined.  This has given me plenty of opportunities to keep improving through trying new techniques.  My favorite technique is, as Bob likes to say, “baby steps” or more precisely, smaller batch sizes.

Smaller batch sizes increase momentum by building confidence through quick accomplishments.   When progress is felt, even the smaller bits, confidence grows and momentum follows.  This means projects are completed faster.  Although you really have to stop thinking of them as projects and more as ever changing works of art; as the world turns, customer’s needs change.

Take a standard software project process made popular by waterfall: gather requirements, refine requirements, design solution, develop solution, test solution, release solution.  Reduce the number of requirements, reduce the time you spend up front gathering and refining business requirements.  Shift focus to designing and developing the solution based on fewer high level requirements.

The goal is to make a tangible “product” as fast as possible.  Get it in front of the users as fast as possible.  This lets you start collecting more relevant feedback earlier in the process.  It’s very hard to specify what you want up front.  It’s much easier to take a product or feature and tell someone what should be changed based on the direct feedback.

The direct feedback is immediately used during the design solution and develop solution phases.  When you take baby steps, it’s easier to design and develop because you have fewer requirements to take into consideration. With fewer requirements to manage, fewer bugs are generated at an exponential rate; in short, a lot less.  The bugs are commonly easier to find with less code to sift through, making them faster to fix.  This has an affect that both speeds up your production and reduces your cost per feature.

Working in smaller batch sizes has many benefits, but it doesn’t work in all cases.  Be mindful of physical travel time when it comes to batch sizes.  You’ll need to find the sweet spot of batch size to travel time ratio that allows you to be as effective as possible.

The perfect example is grocery shopping; buying less often will lower your costs overall.  Less often lowers your fuel costs because you make fewer trips back and forth.  Less often reduces your time spent with less time driving back and forth.  The smallest batch size possible for grocery shopping will be determined mainly by travel costs and time spent.

In the world of software, travel costs are irrelevant, so the smallest batch size is determined mainly by the minimum number of requirements that creates a marketable feature.  Maybe this is the phrase we can use to describe this epiphany, “Marketable Feature Cost” or “MF Cost” for short? :) Regardless of what we call it, taking baby steps is a sure fire way to complete projects faster and reduce your costs at the same time.

Tag, you’re it again Ali!

3 Reasons to Unify Your Data Before Your Next Site Redesign

4 comments Written on August 24th, 2011 by
Categories: Universal Tag, Web Analytics
Tags: ,

I’m a fan of data. And my favorite kind of data is clean and well-organized. And you’re going to need well-organized data before you begin your next project. It’s kind of like cleaning up your desk or tidying up your house. It’s just what needs to be done before the next project can begin. And your next project is the website re-design.

Assume your website will be around for a long time. Consider doing it right once and for all by building something that will last. Here are my top three reasons to unify (or clean up) your data before your next site redesign.

1) One Version of the Truth

I remember hearing this “single version of the truth” phrase often in my relational database days.  Is this something you hear around your office? The same thing you strive for with data stored internally should also apply to your tag vendors outside of your internal firewall.  You will have data that is shared across vendors.  (i.e. Both your Chat provider and your Analytics tools want to track what was purchased on the order confirmation page.)  If everyone gets the data from the same place then your data values will be uniform. In fact, a universal data tag is really your only option for uniform data.

A sample data object showing data that will be shared:
var my_page_data = {
product_name : 'blue widget XXL',
product_id : 'item12345',
product_quantity : '3'
}

2) Easy on the Eyes

Lots of poorly-named JavaScript variables can cause a headache.  And website tag vendors don’t make this easy.  No analytics vender will use “site_section”.   They might have you set “s.prop3″ to site section or set variable “CF12″ to site section.  But an implementor or contractor looking at the code is not likely to know that the value in s.prop3 is site section.  Which means they’ll need a secondary look-up spreadsheet.  And they’ll probably not have the latest version of this spreadsheet.  Which means they’ll probably implement the new tag vendor incorrectly.  This reminds me of a children’s book If You Take a Mouse to the Movies.

var my_page_data = {
site_section : 'energy efficient products',
site_sub_section : 'blue widgets'
}

3) Stand the Test of Time

I probably should have listed this as #1.  Most enterprises rebuild their website at least once a year.  If your site is changing then you’re likely to break things.  That is why you budget extra hours for QA.  Save the time and money by unifying your data now. You’ll be glad you did before for next year’s redesign.  If you change your HTML and the product can no longer be “scraped from the DOM” from a <span> item where “id=productField” then your custom code breaks.  Instead, make the decision now to prepare for your next site redesign and keep the data in a container that will not depend on your last HTML layout template.

I’ll stop with just these three reasons, but there might be a list of 10 reasons.  I’m pretty sure I could make the Yahoo home page with the article, “Top 10 Reasons to Unify Your Data Before Your Next Site Redesign.” :-)

And with that said, Mike – tag you’re it.

Using Zombie Cookies to Improve Privacy?

3 comments Written on August 15th, 2011 by
Categories: Privacy
Tags: , ,

Before starting this post, I want to point that this blog is for debate purposes only and Tealium does not use any ETags or Zombie Cookies.

There’s been a lot of news lately about the use of various techniques such as “local shared objects” or “HTML5 cookies” in order to re-spawn deleted cookie and bypass the consumer’s choice to opt out. These are sometimes referred to as zombie cookies. We at Tealium do not condone such practices and believe that consumers should have the choice to opt out if they want to. However, this post is not about the philosophical debate and there’s been a tremendous amount of discussions already on the topic. An example can be found here.

The topic that we feel has not been discussed is how these same re-spawning techniques can be used to actually improve consumer privacy. That’s right. Zombie cookies can actually be good for privacy.

Before I continue, I want to point out that there are two kinds of opt-outs today. The first is using the new “do not track” headers within new browsers. This is something that many vendors already support. Customers of Tealium for example can take advantage of Tealium’s support in this area to improve the privacy of their visitors.

The second method – which is more traditional – is to allow consumers to opt out of specific tracking. For example, a consumer may decide to be tracked through analytics tools but opt out of behavioral targeting.

Opt-outs are flawed

The problem with today’s opt-out mechanism is that they’re inherently flawed. Here’s why:

When a visitor opts out of a service, an “opt out” cookie is added to the visitor’s browser. The vendors’ scripts or tags look for the “opt out” cookie. If no cookie exists, then the tracking is continued. If an “opt out” cookie exists, the service stops the tracking. Because these services rely on cookies for opt out, when a visitor deletes their cookies, the visitor has effectively just opted back in.

Opt-outs require a more permanent state

The problem with today’s opt-out mechanism is that it is only temporary and stops functioning the moment visitors delete their cookies. The industry needs a more permanent way to allow people to opt out. As discussed previously, the browsers have come up with their solution in the form of “do not track” headers. The problem with these headers is that they’re an “all or nothing” proposition and do not provide visitors with the ability to opt out of only a category of trackers.

What if the industry started adopting some of the same zombie cookie techniques in order to provide a more permanent opt out mechanism? The same technology that is used in some instances to re-spawn tracking cookies can be used to re-spawn “opt out” cookies.

Remember, it’s not the technology but the application that matters. By using the same techniques, digital trackers can actually provide a more permanent opt out mechanism to consumers and better respect their request.

As of the writing of this post, we know of no tracker using such techniques for opt outs and we’re not recommending that vendors do so. But what do you think? Do you think that this technology should be used to provide a better privacy or do you think the industry should completely stay away from such re-spawning techniques?

My personal belief is that if a technology can be used to provide a valuable service to consumers, then it should be used.

And with that said, Ty – tag you’re it.

Why Do Tags Hurt Your Site?

5 comments Written on August 8th, 2011 by
Categories: tag management
Tags: ,

Over the last few years the tagging scene has blown up.  It started with analytics awhile back, but quickly expanded to other digital marketing ventures.  Early on companies found that adding a tag to their site was easier than past integrations with heavy IT work on the back end.  Vendors realized traditional integrations were too painful.  A quicker and easier way to sell their service was through tagging; “it only takes 15 minutes to add our tag, just copy and paste.”  Now there must be well over 500 different vendors that offer a tagging solution.  Tags are simply here to stay.

So what’s the deal with tags?  Why do tags hurt my site?  Any single tag by itself is negligible in terms of site performance, but every little bit adds up; think death by a thousand paper cuts.  Some sites have a handful of tags, others can have dozens or even a hundred tags.  Any given tag takes time to download and execute.

If we take a low average of 100 milliseconds to load and execute a single tag, 10 tags adds at least 1 second to your page speed.  1 second may not sound like much, but in internet time it’s worth 20-40% of your traffic or 7% of your revenue.  Google’s study shows an increase of 500ms reduced their traffic by 20%.  Amazon’s study shows 100ms reduces their sales by 1% and that was years ago.

Tags aren’t the vendor’s core product, they are just the means to an end.  That means vendor’s don’t take pride in creating a high performing tag.  They don’t take the time to keep their tags up to date with current standards.  They know their tag by itself isn’t going to hurt that much, so why focus on that when their core product is where the money is at.  That leaves us with a less than optimal tag, a tag that can hurt our sites.

There are things you can look for to determine if a tag can hurt your site.  For starters, look for a tag that uses document.write.  This JavaScript function can cause serious concern for your site’s usabilty, reliability and speed.  It can cause your site to display blank pages.  It can stop your pages from loading completely.  It can cause error messages to popup.  It can cause your content or menus to not function properly.  It’s an obtrusive method for tagging that can cause many different kinds of issues, hurting your site and ultimately hurting your business goals.

There are other ways you can identify tags that hurt your site: look for tags that can be refactored, minified and / or combined.   If you’re interested in further exploration, feel welcome to continue the conversation in the comments or contact us for more information. Ali … tag, you’re it!

What to Look For in an Enterprise Tag Management Platform

No Comments » Written on August 1st, 2011 by
Categories: tag management

Welcome to the first installment of Tealium’s blog post series named ‘Tag, You’re It’.  In this series an expert from Tealium will be discussing matters relevant to Tag Management and the Digital Marketing space.  At the end of each blog post we will indicate who will be writing the next post by saying ‘Someone, Tag You’re it’. In this post I will be tackling the following: What to Look For in an Enterprise Tag Management Platform.

Tag Management is a young yet quickly evolving space with just a handful of capable players.  My daily interactions with companies make it quite clear that there is a strong desire from the online community to understand what Tag Management is and how to differentiate between the players in the space today. I remember back in 2000 when joining WebSideStory we were in a very similar situation, one of the very first SAAS web analytics platforms tasked with educating the market and creating what would be the foundation for the digital marketing revolution.  So stepping back into my trailblazing shoes I will provide my perspective on what to look for in an enterprise tag management Platform, here we go!

Scalability:  Probably the most important factor in considering a tag management platform, consider the risk associated with entrusting your entire digital marketing infrastructure into the hands of a vendor within a very new space.  Scalability of the overall platform (not just your specific instance) should be considered for a number of reasons.  The most relevant are the inevitable spikes in traffic that will occur across any tag management platform.  If traffic spikes and the solution is not capable of responding or adjusting you will end up with incomplete, inaccurate or possibly no data at all.

Accuracy: Consider how the tag management platform is going about the loading and triggering of your tags and subsequent capture of the associated data.  Are there instances where your data might be at risk?  At the core, you’ll need a tag management system that lets you collect accurate data.

Usability:  Who is going to be using the platform? Make sure the folks who are going to be using the tool have a chance to evaluate the tool and decide if they are going to be comfortable using it.  For example, if the tool is being primarily used by marketing make sure it does not require the user to use JavaScript for configuration. It would be a shame to purchase what should be an enabling platform for your marketing team and then see it sit on the shelf once you go through an implementation.

Scope: When evaluating Tag Management platforms it is important to ensure your provider has the ability to manage any tag that you might decide to use.  Take the time to understand how the solution integrates the complexities of the more advanced tags such as Web Analytics or Product Recommendation tools.  A simple ‘yes we can handle any tag’ is not sufficient and typically will lead to a disappointing result when the rubber meets the road.

Customization:  Tag Management is not and should not be categorized as a simple container tag that you lump all of your tags into.  Tag Management can be a tremendously powerful platform that can extend the nature of your data and tags.  Make sure the platform includes a data management aspect, the ability to control and manipulate the data that will be passed into all of the tags that you are managing through the tool.  Data management allows a marketer to control exactly what data they want to share with vendors.  This is the promise of Tag Management, Digital Marketing is a real-time environment and a capable Tag Management platform should create the opportunity for Marketers to join in the battle.

Agnostic: Tag Management platforms should be completely agnostic and independent from any of your digital marketing providers. The promise of Tag Management is to be able to quickly and easily add, change and TRY new tools out.  Having an agnostic Tag Management provider provides the foundation for a dynamic and constantly evolving Digital Marketing culture.

Feel free to contact us if you have any questions about the Tag Management space, Tealium or Digital Marketing in general.  And with that said, Eric….Tag You’re It!

Announcing Tealium iQ

3 comments Written on July 25th, 2011 by
Categories: tag management
Tags: ,

Tealium is proud to announce the launch of Tealium iQ, a new self-service solution that enables marketers to manage and deploy their digital marketing solutions without having to burden IT resources.

Tealium iQ’s new point-and-click user interface allows marketers to easily add, remove or modify the various web page tags associated with the vast majority of today’s digital marketing vendors. This means digital marketers can launch online campaigns faster, measure better, and easily swap out and test different marketing vendors before making a buying decision.

“The goal of tag management is to give marketing and measurement professionals direct control over their digital measurement infrastructure, and to eliminate the need for costly and time-consuming IT cycles,” said Gary Angel, president and CTO of Semphonic, the leading web analytics and measurement consulting group. “Tealium iQ does a superb job of that.”

Web page tags are used for everything from data collection and measurement to behavioral targeting and online optimization. Tealium estimates that up to 90 percent of today’s digital marketing vendors – web analytics companies, retargeting vendors, email service providers, affiliate marketers, etc. – use some type of JavaScript-based tag that needs to be implemented on a client’s web site.

Tag Management Console

How Tealium iQ Works

With the proliferation in the number of web site tags that must be managed today, Tealium iQ provides a single ‘universal’ tag that enables companies to manage and deploy all their different digital marketing solutions from one web console.

Until now, most tag management solutions still require IT involvement and JavaScript knowledge, but Tealium iQ is the first solution to allow marketers to manage 100 percent of the tagging themselves thanks to a new intuitive interface and instant integration with all major digital marketing vendors, from Facebook to Google Analytics.

Users simply click on a vendor, set some quick rules, and hit publish to implement their tags automatically. They can do everything from adding a Google AdWords conversion code to their confirmation page, to immediately launching a banner retargeting campaign – all with point and click simplicity.

“Tealium has greatly improved our online marketing efficiency, while also freeing IT resources,” said Houman Akhavan, vice president of marketing for US Auto Parts, which has more than 550,000 car parts in its online inventory. “We can execute our campaigns and digital initiatives a lot faster, which translates into better results.”

Tag management has grown tremendously in recent years due to the proliferation of tags, according to analysts. Angel calls tag management one of the “most important new technologies in digital marketing today.” The average Tealium client carries between 20-30 vendor tags on their web pages.

With the launch of Tealium iQ, Tealium has combined the best tag management technology with the easiest, and most intuitive interface in the industry. Contact us for a live demo of Tealium iQ.

The Growing Case for Tag Management Systems

1 Comment » Written on July 17th, 2011 by
Categories: tag management
Tags: , , ,

One of the  conversations that digital marketing teams engage in today’s environment is whether  they need a tag management system or not. As companies are increasing their use of digital marketing technologies, their need for a tag management solution increases. Up to now, most companies seeking a tag management system typically shared one of two characteristics:

  • They deployed lots of different tags (i.e. analytics, ads, affiliates, etc.)
  • They had a constant need to change tags (i.e. new marketing programs, trial of new vendors, etc.)

There are of course other factors that can prompt organizations to invest in tag management systems. For a thorough list, we recommend that you check out the Forrester research titled “How Tag Management Improves Web Intelligence” by Joe Stanhope.

Up to now the group least likely to require a tag management system included the two following characteristics:

  • They don’t use lots of tags
  • The have no plans to change their vendors

Sounds logical right? Think again.

Just recently, Google introduced a new feature in Google Analytics which provides valuable reports around page load performance, called Site Speed Reports. The new feature helps companies determine  the impact of site performance on their web site conversion.

In order to take advantage of this features, customers will have to update their tracking code in the following manner:

<script type=”text/javascript”>
var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-X']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageLoadTime']);
(function() { var ga = document.createElement(‘script’); ga.type = ‘text/javascript’; ga.async = true; ga.src = (‘https:’ == document.location.protocol ? ‘https://ssl’ : ‘http://www’) + ‘.google-analytics.com/ga.js’; var s = document.getElementsByTagName(‘script’)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); </script>

The change of tracking code is not unique to Google Analytics. Just recently, Yahoo! announced that the Yahoo! Web Analytics tracking code V4 will no longer be supported.

In both cases, tag management systems let customers update their tracking code without changing their pages. For Tealium customers, this is just a matter of changing their templates from within the Tag Management Console.

We’re no longer seeing tag management as a technology deployed by customers that want to constantly add or change their vendors, but also by organizations that want to make sure that they’re deploying the latest version of their vendor tags. To find out more about how Tealium can help you leverage the latest features from your digital marketing vendors, contact us.

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