Google Tag Manager vs. Open Web Analytics

Google Tag Manager is well suited when the marketer or marketing team does not work closely with the developers. In this scenario, it means that the marketer can deploy 3rd party tools such as live chat widgets, advertising pixels, and much more themselves in a timely manner. Google Tag Manager may be less relevant in an organization where the marketer is also the developer or has a strong development background, where they can implement the 3rd party tags directly on the site when they need. But even in this instance, there's still great benefit in using Google Tag Manager.

Incentivized

Open Web Analytics is an opportunity for those that like to have skeletons for the start of customized solutions. The package offers several best practices set of features and functions. The possibilities add up to higher performance API for example from Google Analytics. The vast of additional features are of higher value because the market does not have other solutions. There are solutions around Open Web Analytics for example in SAP Design Studio that integrate beyond Content Management systems and attached Shops Systems to Warehousing, Logistics, and Deliverment Management. The market situation are covering all that is possible and has demand. The universality is implemented at the user interface and therefore unmatched and even robust for new kinds of visualization interfaces or input device types. A draw is that against payment system remains a security gap and data security and data safety might be a topic for each customer and user.

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

• High performance track and state-of-the-art analyze the human use of website pages and apps.
• Combines conventional Google Analytics-like-tracking with heatmap-like-tracking features.
• Offers JavaScript and PHP based APIs for web analytics page integration of versatile tracking features.
• Supports best practices established for content management frameworks based on WordPress or MediaWiki.

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

• Open Web Analytics can be available for integration for the broad mass in all PHP- and Javascript-based Content Management Frameworks.
• A shop for custom add-ons of the platform Open Web Analytics may be a big chance.
• Enhance in documentation, examples, best practices are a great chance to get more users active and a broader audience.
• Offer a closer integration to the leading tool Google Analytics in so many features and functions. Learn from Matomy for example.

Incentivized

Until a strong case or need arises for enterprise tag management, I cannot see any reason why we would discontinue using Google Tag Manager. Even if we were to switch to a different vendor, we would still likely use Google Tag Manager to manage Google Analytics code and Google AdWords conversion and remarketing pixels

Google Tag Manager is the best tool to centralize everything in one place including marketing, analytics, integration with third party tools for AB testing, cookie management, etc. it includes user's management, debugging features, tag approval process, etc. it also saves time and resources by not relying on developers.

It depends wether you are seeking official support from Google itself, in which case it would be rated very low because it's not their business model, they would rather have you work with one of their Google Analytics Certified Partner (GACP). In terms of self-served support, Google offer extensive documentation at https://developers.google.com/tag-manager/, recently revamped training (https://analyticsacademy.withgoogle.com/course05/preview), has active forums and user community (https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/104865292981489764063) which can typically answer even the most advanced questions.

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

With GTM we are able to integrate GA4 with other platforms we use. We can then send data to GA4 and AdWords and relay that info to our customers. They all work well together and give us a good opportunity to report back to our clients. We haven't used a ton of other products that do what GTM does, so I guess it has a leg up there

Incentivized

Google Analytics is the market leader for web analytics. The package offers search engine marketing that can be integrated into Open Web Analytics. The features and functions of Open Web Analytics compare close to Matomo Analytics. In terms of market share Google Analytics has all and the other two have very little and their other competitors have almost nothing. That changes in specialized markets. Google Analytics is everywhere and much more influential than other search engines because of that particular service. There had been a dying period for such web analytics software packages. There are three kinds of web analytics software packages. Free/open source like Open Web Analytics and Matomo, Proprietary like Urchin from Google, and hosted/software-as-a-service-packages like the market leader Google Analytics. I consider all as rather different in performance. Those closer to the busiest server are the best for traffic. Heat maps are well placed on the hosting server.

Incentivized

• GTM has allowed us to show positive ROI for multiple clients via connecting their two websites so that they could see the amount of money advertising generates.
• GTM has also shown a positive ROI from an internal perspective as we can use templates to immediately upload our standard, customized event tracking which saves hours of testing and configuration.
• GTM's lack of error catching features has caused more time and individual testing but the improved preview feature has helped save time.

Incentivized

• Moderate lifetime operating costs.
• Enhances the performances of all online business interests enormously.
• Enables a great customized experience of web analytics.
• Compatible to web analytics standards and references.

Incentivized