There's some interesting things happening in the tag management space lately, the likes of which haven't happened since Google Tag Manager came onto the scene in 2012. And similar to that time, when that event seemed to overshadow the real news of the enterprise power-play between Tealium and Ensighten, this one has only marginal impact to the tag management space. I'm talking about Adobe Launch.

Adobe is rebranding their Dynamic Tag Management tool, which was acquired from a company called Satellite, as Adobe Launch. This is somewhat of a re-architecture, but the fundamentals are mainly the same. It's still rules-based as opposed to tag-based, and there's a lot to be desired when it comes to native support for 3rd party solutions. So, what's the big deal? Well, they are doing well to integrate their acquired products together, like Marketo, Omniture, and Test and Target via this new tool. Much like how Google Tag Manager does for all of the disparate Google products.

But what they are not doing is making a tag management tool which makes it easy to integrate all manner of technologies. Which makes sense, because universal integration is not their agenda -- why would they make things simple for their competitors? That said, they do allow companies to develop, deliver, and support integrations via the "extensions" feature. So over time, this will be a vibrant space for technological collaboration. It's a good thing, and it's also right in line with what Google did with GTM.

Both DTM and GTM take this insular approach further when you consider the architecture of their "data layer" features. And it is this aspect plus the lack of real 3rd party integration which I say makes both of these products good candidates for deployment via Tealium. So let's get into it.

Data Layer Considerations

Adobe Launch has a feature called "Data Elements" which allows users to define and populate variables with either references or custom code which returns values. This is a useful feature in that is creates a pool of standard data which can be referenced by all integrated products to describe events. The definitions are stored in the Launch hosted library, and executed on demand to provide returned values as they are needed by the integrated Extensions (aka tags, but not really). This is, at first blush, the purpose of a data layer. But the implementation here is definitively not a data layer, because it does not come anywhere close to the W3C specification for a data layer object.

What is a data layer object? Quite simply, it is a globally declared object where key-value pairs can be set and retrieved by any integrated scripts. The structure of this object may vary, but the facts that it holds the values directly, and that it can be modified and read by any other scripts is what makes it a data layer.

Google's dataLayer is a bit closer to the mark, but it is uniquely structured and handles event data in a way that makes it difficult to interact with outside of the platform, so for that reason I put it in the same camp as Adobe -- not a viable steward of the global data layer.

Back to Adobe; They do not themselves consider "Data Elements" a data layer. In fact, when doing advanced implementations, the documentation even stipulates that a data layer is required to make some things work. Their system does not have any managed specification for it, so they call upon the W3C to provide that.

Tealium, on the other hand, takes pride in their agnosticism and 3rd party platform support. It's a core tenet of the company, and the key features of the iQ product. They have a very open data layer implementation which is a managed component of their implementation. And it's easy to work with both inside and out of the platform.

Tag Management Considerations

As I mentioned, Adobe Launch does not natively support many 3rd party integrations. While others may freely publish Extensions into the ecosystem, Adobe themselves are focusing solely on making the Adobe products integrate well.

Many times I have come across the situation where clients are considering whether to standardize on Google Tag Manager or Adobe Launch for tag management. I say both are inferior choices because of their proprietary natures. They are not going to do well at making all of your purchased technology work together. But yes, they are great at managing their own walled-garden tools. For that reason I have pushed for deployment of both concurrently. It's not a question in my mind whether to use one or the other. If you're investing in Adobe products, use Launch to deploy them. If you're investing in Google advertising products, use Tag Manager to deploy them as well.

But how do you deploy? Do you hard-code Launch and GTM into the site? Absolutely not. Use a de facto tag manager for this. Look, at the end of the day, Adobe and Google are just like any other martech product, all with rules and data transformation capabilities. And their consolidation efforts via their "tag managers" are looking more and more like any other SaaS platform with component features what you can turn on and off in the UI. Also -- and this may come as a surprise -- they are not the first platforms to introduce tags that can manage other tags. DMPs I've worked with have been capable of this for years.

A best-choice tag manager will manage your data layer and provide easy implementations for any and all technologies you can think of. Integration across technologies both within and outside of the tool should be baked into its core features.

Pulling it Together

Adobe is doing great things to make deploying their component products easier. But they are not solving your tag management and data layer needs with Launch. It's really a great move to deploy Launch into the head via the Tealium synchronous tag, and let Tealium be the manager of the data layer. For that matter, do the same with Google as well, deploying their gtag.js-based code through Tealium. Doing so will underscore that the real decision has never been about "Adobe or Google". The answer is both, because they each have their own special value propositions. (Though while Google's is and has always been advertising, Adobe is still sorting out a lane for themselves, so to speak.)

In any case, using an agnostic TMS will allow a company to evaluate and replace Adobe with Google, and vice-versa, without impacting their whole stack implementation. That alone is worth a ton when you're facing renewal with a company whom you feel isn't providing sufficient service. The pain of replacement shouldn't be a factor when deciding whether to renew.

TL;DR

Key reasons to deploy Launch via Tealium:

  • Tealium provides a managed data layer specification, which Launch needs, but doesn't provide.
  • Tealium provides extensive 3rd party integration capabilities which neither Launch nor GTM provide.
  • Tealium as your data layer and integration backbone allows you to swap out these products more easily, mitigating "sunk cost" renewal decisions.

Get in touch with me if you'd like to know more about how I deploy these tools with effective results using Tealium iQ.