Top Questions about Adobe Dynamic Tag Management

Over the past year we have worked with thousands of great companies to help educate them on the capabilities of Adobe Dynamic Tag Management and how this solution can help them with their digital marketing implementation and integration issues. Through this process we have encountered a common set of questions and misconceptions about the true features and capabilities of DTM. I wanted to take this opportunity to go through these questions and provide some clarity on these issues.

Why is Adobe Dynamic Tag Management free? Is this an attempt to lock companies in?

Charging for tag management would be like a word processing vendor charging extra for spellcheck. It just does not make any sense to do that. This is a “feature” that should be included with your current investment in the Adobe Marketing Cloud.

Adobe makes some of the most sophisticated and complex digital intelligence solutions in the market and sometimes they can be challenging to implement and maintain. We need to stop talking about how hard it is to implement any sort of analytics, and start having conversations about activating solutions from ANY vendor.

Does Dynamic Tag Management only support Adobe Solutions?

DTM supports any HTML- or JavaScript-based marketing tag, no matter the vendor. Tag management is an industry-wide problem, and DTM is an industry-wide solution.

Can Dynamic Tag Management scale to support a large enterprise volume of traffic?

DTM runs on an old 486 under Ben Gaines’ desk. Just kidding. Let’s take a look at the architecture of DTM. The application that users log into to manage the configuration of their tracking rules is a complexly separate system from the three different hosting options that DTM offers. Adobe can host the tracking library for you on Akamai, the global leader in delivery networks. Other companies with CDN solutions, including the other legacy TMS vendors use Akamai as well. Akamai has data centers across the globe and in the unlikely event that all of Akamai is down, then the bigger concern would be that our robot overlords are finally here to take over. Aside from Akamai, DTM offers three methods that enable companies to host the tracking library on their own infrastructure. In any of the hosting solutions, we could shut down the application servers that host the UI and the tracking library would be unaffected. So if you are expecting a huge spike of traffic on a busy day like Cyber Monday, there is nothing to worry about even if every other company all have traffic spikes at the same time.

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Is DTM able to deploy Adobe Target without any flicker or screen flash?

Of course! Adobe Target performs exceptionally well within DTM with no flicker or screen flash. The conditional placement of mboxes using the built-in targeting and segmentation of DTM is faster and reduces wasteful server calls.

Will the DTM js file continue to grow and become bloated with a potential negative impact on website performance?

The tracking library is actually a collection of files, which loads the other helper files when the scripts or tags are needed based on the rule conditions. However, since the entire library is deployed at the same time, DTM is able to not only cache the library on the first page view that speeds up the site performance, but this method eliminates the dependency of another DNS call to query a shared customer database to retrieve the code segment for that page on every page load. There is no bottlenecked database query that runs on every page load for DTM; it simply pulls the files needed from the library at runtime. There is also a physically separate staging and production file, so DTM does not rely on the additional overhead of more JavaScript to determine which version of the code is to be loaded on every page call.

Does Dynamic Tag Management work on mobile apps?

A few things need to be clarified here first. True native mobile app tag management is as real as this image:https://blog.adobe.com/media_50fb1451e5f149d5a27dfe07ecbc42ea6a60e887.gif

Putting a webified version of your mobile application as a proxy between the app and the collection server is not mobile tag management. If your mobile app is a wrapper that pulls in HTML pages, then DTM works flawlessly. However, if you are building a true native mobile app, then there is not a true tag management solution in the market that does not put your app in grave risk of being in violation of terms of service from the major app stores or that can truly deliver on the promise of mobile TMS … yet. However, the Adobe mobile SDK is extremely powerful and offers integration with Adobe Target.

Is the implementation of DTM longer than other legacy TMS solutions?

Yes, this is 100% true. We have two lines of JavaScript instead of just one; it will take you 2 minutes to copy that into your webpages instead of just one. This extra time burden on the IT team is completely worth the trade-off to gain complete control of where and when you can load any tag onto your site. Do you want to load every tag in the head, or do you want the ability to also ensure the exact placement of every tag, every script, every time?

Are you able to create sequencing or control the timing of tags?

Any of the scripts, tags, or tools can be sequenced in a drag and drop interface within the GUI, and rules can be sequenced by setting dependencies based on any data point or by forcing the order that rules execute.

Can Adobe provide comprehensive data collection and ownership?

Absolutely! Adobe is the verified global leader in data collection and marketing technologies. Do not take my word for it, read the recent Forrester report on this:

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Is DTM only for medium to small businesses? We have been told that most Enterprise clients are using other legacy TMS vendors.

There were many people that bought Beta Max machines before DVDs came out too. DTM has over 1,400 companies using the solution across thousands and thousands of sites, including a large percentage of enterprise class solutions. Before the acquisition of Satellite (aka Dynamic Tag Manager), when it was a paid solution in excess of $100k a year, Satellite never lost a head-to-head POC with any vendor .

What is the SLA for Dynamic Tag Management?

As DTM is a feature included with any Adobe Digital Marketing contract, the SLA of the contract covers DTM.

Is DTM only client side? Is it able to run server side or as a hybrid solution?

The generated tacking library is 100% client side, and this is the fastest possible solution on the market today. Any time you put a dependency on a server side component you are not only introducing new fail points, latency, and redundant server calls but also creating a bottleneck that hinders, not helps scaling. DTM is a fully deployed client-side library that is compressed and minimized to perform at quick response times with no limit on scale.

Do you need advanced technical skills to deploy tags and scripts inside of Dynamic Tag Management?

Yes! DTM requires advanced PHD courses in using the native copy and paste function on nearly every computer in the world to deploy tags. Oh, you might also need to use the mouse to click save. In all seriousness, DTM was designed to handle 90–95% of all tracking scenarios without having to write any custom JavaScript. Given the nearly infinite variations in the websites and applications that companies use, you will surely encounter something that will need a bit of JavaScript to get the job done. If you are being told that you will never have to see or work with any JavaScript in other legacy TMS vendors, it is simply not true.

Where can I find out more about Dynamic Tag Management?

If you are ready to get started with DTM, it could not be easier. Just go to https://dtm.adobe.com and complete the registration form for your full-featured DTM account to be setup.

If you have any additional questions about DTM that were not covered here, please let us know!

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