Google Tag Manager

Google Tag Manager implementation, configuration, and best practices (133 posts)

Behind the Cloud – Releases and scheduling in Dataform

In this episode of Behind the Cloud, Matthew dives into the details of releases and scheduling in Dataform. He breaks down how to manage different versions of your codebase in GitHub. From taking snapshots, to scheduling executions at various intervals daily, hourly, or monthly. By the end of the episode, you’ll have the know-how to confidently release and schedule your code, making it easier to build robust tables and models with Dataform. Watch below 👇 on Youtube, or catch more from the ser

Matthew Hooson•7 Mar 2025

Behind the Cloud: GCP foundational best practice

In this episode of Behind the Cloud, Matt explains how to organise GCP projects by specific use cases, how to automate processes, establish clear naming conventions, and follow best practices around security, tagging, and more. Watch below 👇 or head over to our YouTube channel Transcript Introduction [00:00:00] Matthew: Hello and welcome to another episode of Behind the Cloud. We’ve had a little bit of a brief hiatus but now we’re back and we’re going to do another series of videos. Today

Matthew Hooson•27 Jun 2024

Core Web Vitals optimisation case study: UAL reduces container size & improves performance

The University of the Arts London (UAL) is the largest specialist Art and Design institution in Europe with over 18,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students. It comprises six specialist art and design colleges: Camberwell College of Arts, Central St Martins, Chelsea College of Arts, London College of Communication, London College of Fashion and Wimbledon College of Arts. The UAL Digital Public Platforms team manages data from across 10+ sites and over 250,000 users a month. The challenge

Mark Rochefort•9 Oct 2023

GTM’s new Google tag: one tag to rule them all

Goodbye to the GA4 Config Tag Anyone who’s spent any time implementing the Google Analytics 4 (GA4) tracking in Google Tag Manager (GTM) over the past few years will be familiar with the GA4 Configuration tag. Essentially the top level of tracking within GTM for configuring GA4, this is where you would specify your Measurement ID, configure server requests and specify things like event parameters and user properties. The GA4 Config tag would then typically act as a reference point for all your

Nick Roberts•8 Sept 2023

Getting started with Plotly Dash

This blog post is a brief introduction to Plotly Dash and a short tutorial to learn how to build a custom visualisation. For this tutorial, you will need some basic knowledge of Python, HTML and JavaScript. This article will focus on locally building and visualising your graph. What is Plotly Dash? Let’s start with the basics: what is Plotly Dash? Dash is a Python framework created by Plotly to render interactive dashboards which can also be hosted online, by using just Python. Dash has both

Natalia Rizzi•22 Aug 2023

How to create events in GA4 using the UI

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) now gives users the ability to create new events or modify existing events through the use of the GA4 user interface. This is a fantastic add-on available to all and will be welcomed by those who are not familiar with their existing tag management system or do not have the relevant tech resources available to make some changes in a timely manner. Why would you create an event? First of all, creating a new event keeps you safe from interacting with existing events that

Olade Honvo•11 Apr 2023

Google Analytics data import: automate data import with Python & Cloud functions

Why automate data import into Google Analytics A few months back I was granted access to a Google Cloud Source Repository (private Git repositories hosted on Google Cloud part of Google’s Cloud developer tools) that contained Python code and configuration details for automating the extraction of data from a BigQuery table and uploading to Google Analytics as a custom dimension via the Management API on a desired schedule. Choosing the right approach for blog word counts Being primarily a Jav

Victor Sarker•16 Nov 2020

Three popular GTM server-side tagging misconceptions

With the recent release of server-side tagging for Google Tag Manager, a whole new woooooorld of possibilities has opened up. But on that, some people have got the wrong idea, so with that in mind, here's three popular (but wrong!) things people believe about server-side GTM. 1) You still need client-side GTM to make it work This is slightly unfair, as I can see why this misconception arose. You do need something to send your hits to the GTM server, and in many cases the easiest and best thin

Adam Englebright•23 Sept 2020

Life as a new starter: remote edition

In the analytics industry, everyone I have had the opportunity to work with is so passionate about their role and always thrives on learning and sharing techniques. So when you're starting a new job at an analytics agency you know you'll have the opportunity to learn lots of new tricks and experiment with new types of datasets, which is very exciting. Excitement is one of the two feelings you experience when starting a new job. Then comes the unknown, the nerves - What if I'm not what they expe

Jacob Birch•3 Jul 2020

Google Tag Manager form field tracking: capture pre-populated form changes

This is part 5 (and my first contribution, so bear with me) to this "semi-regular" series, dedicated to reusable GTM solutions for scenarios or issues we’ve encountered more than once. Last time, we looked at how to capture existing classic Google Analytics calls with GTM, and this time we'll be exploring how to track changes in pre-populated HTML form fields. Why I did it I was recently approached with a request from a client who wanted to know which fields were updated in a form that was pa

Victor Sarker•22 Jun 2020

Emergency Analytics Support

It can be tricky judging how to pitch a new offer in times of crisis. There’s a fine line between being genuinely helpful and appearing exploitative. Sometimes you have to just jump in and try things, knowing they may be misinterpreted by the minority. In business, indecision can be crippling. While people’s lives are undoubtedly the most precious thing, livelihoods are worth saving too. A number of our clients - particularly those in the retail sector - have been hit hard by recent events.

Steven Elliott•2 Apr 2020

Google Tag Manager setup: how to create your first tag

Creating your first GTM tag This is the third of a series dedicated to introducing you, faithful reader, to the wonders and delights of Google Tag Manager. Last time, we took a high-level look at GTM and how it works, and today we'll be looking at how to set up a simple tag. Setting up a Google Analytics pageview tag We're going to set up a Google Analytics pageview tag. This replaces the old hardcoded GA that you'd used to have to put on every page of the site. We start by going to tags and

Adam Englebright•7 Feb 2020

Capturing existing classic GA calls with GTM – Solutions Corner #4

This is part 4 of a semi-regular series, dedicated to reusable GTM solutions for scenarios or issues we’ve encountered more than once. The challenge with pre-GTM classic calls Last time, we looked at how to turn on-page classic Google Analytics calls to data layer pushes, and this time we'll be looking at a supplement to that—what if the classic GA call you're looking to capture is before GTM loads? This pretty much only matters for ecommerce, so that's what the solution focuses on. We start

Adam Englebright•29 Jan 2020

Google Tag Manager basics: a closer look at GTM’s core concepts

Exploring GTM core concepts This is the second of a series dedicated to introducing you, faithful reader, to the wonders and delights of Google Tag Manager. Last time, we were looking at just what a tag manager is anyway? This time, we'll be taking a look at GTM itself. We're going to go through the three key components of GTM: tags, triggers and variables. We're not going to touch on the other things in the GTM sidebar, folders and templates, for the time being—they're useful extensions but n

Adam Englebright•24 Jan 2020

Google Tag Manager Basics #1 - What Is A Tag Manager?

This is the first of a new series dedicated to introducing the uninitiated to the wonders and delights of Google Tag Manager. Before we start thinking too closely about GTM itself, though, we'll pull back a bit and ask: What is a tag manager? A tag manager is a service that allows you to remotely insert and manage small pieces of code, or “tags”, onto a site by means of a Javascript snippet placed across the whole site. There are a number of different tag managers out there—Tealium, Ensighte

Adam Englebright•17 Jan 2020

Turning classic GA calls into dataLayer pushes with GTM

This is part 3 of a semi-regular series, dedicated to reusable GTM solutions for scenarios or issues we’ve encountered more than once. Last time we looked at how to track clicks on iframes using GTM, and this time we’re looking at how to turn on-page classic Google Analytics calls to data layer pushes. The problem with hard-coded GA calls Say you still have hard-coded calls to classic GA on the page, but the library code itself was being delivered via GTM. It's now been removed, but there are

Adam Englebright•9 Jan 2020

How to Conduct an Exceptional Training Session

So… you’ve been asked to conduct a training session and you don’t know where to start. Or, you’re looking for a way to take your current training process to the next level. Whatever your level of experience, the following tips will help you make your next training session exceptional. 1. Know the subject The first step in giving an exceptional training session is being deeply familiar with the subject matter. In the words of Albert Einstein: You may think you know a subject through and throu

Dave Beatty•6 Dec 2019

Three Small Recent GA/GTM Improvements

Google are always making small unannounced tweaks and improvements to their products—here are a few of the more noteworthy ones we've spotted recently! Scroll Depth Tracking I gave out at length last year about the fact that you can't specify the trigger conditions for the listener dropping on the scroll depth trigger—meaning the page length couldn't be calculated accurately and causing scroll depth events to fire early. I suggested that they might want to let you select the listener conditio

Adam Englebright•20 Sept 2019

Next‑Generation measurement with Google Analytics 4

Why GA4 has us excited This announcement has us rather excited at Measurelab. It has been a long time coming and represents the beginning of a completely new shift in how we use and think about digital measurement with Google Analytics. Leaving the old pageview model behind What we are effectively looking at here is a move away from Google Analytics as we know it, which inherited its underlying data collection schema and methods from Urchin Analytics; the analytics software product Google bo

Steven Elliott•2 Aug 2019

GTM iframe tracking – Solutions Corner #2

This is part 2 of a semi-regular series, dedicated to reusable GTM solutions for scenarios or issues we've encountered more than once. Last time we looked at how to fire Google Analytics event to keep track of your Google Optimize experiments in GA, and this time we're looking at tracking clicks on iframes. We have encountered, several times, the situation of a client wanting to track clicks on an iframe. While we can't do much about interactions with stuff within the iframe without having GTM a

Adam Englebright•2 Apr 2019

Google Analytics Enhanced Ecommerce tracking with Adobe DTM

Here at Measurelab, we work predominantly with the Google stack but that doesn't stop us using other tools. As there's not much documentation available in the public forum on how to implement Enhanced Ecommerce in Google Analytics using Adobe Dynamic Tag Manager (DTM) formerly know as Satellite, I think this blog post would be useful. As good introduction to the tools itself, below there’s a useful overview of Adobe’s Dynamic Tag Management architecture, which is from their learning resource pa

Alex Cirstea•21 Jan 2019

Overcoming the limitations of Google Analytics

Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager are used by around 30 to 50 million companies worldwide. The tools are great for basic web analytics but restrict the user to aggregated data unless a substantial fee is paid (reported to be £90K per annum). This presents a large obstacle for small to medium sized businesses who want to develop a data-driven strategy. Let’s imagine a small retailer wants to implement a recommendation engine. Not a bad idea given that Amazon estimates that around 35% of sal

David Kane•5 Nov 2018

GTM event tracking best practices – Solutions Corner #1

This is part 1 of what I hope will become a semi-frequent series on here, dedicated to reusable GTM solutions for scenarios or issues we've encountered more than once. This particular entry is a companion to Mark's piece from a couple of years back, but for Google Optimize rather that Optimizely. In short, it sends data layer pushes so you can fire Google Analytics events when there are Optimize experiments running, which saves you from using custom dimension slots etc in the course of ordinary

Adam Englebright•1 Oct 2018

Goodbye DoubleClick, hello Google Marketing Platform!

Last week, Google announced they were unifying their analytics and advertising platforms under a single new name: Google Marketing Platform. The Google Analytics 360 Suite and DoubleClick brands are being replaced with this single name. What does this mean for DoubleClick? If anything this is a change that has needed to happen for years. DoubleClick always sat rather clumsily alongside other tools from Google and this shift heralds the beginning of a more unified approach. Search Ads 360 wil

Mark Rochefort•17 Jul 2018

The Problem With Google Tag Manager Triggers: Those Shiny New Built-In Options (And a Possible Solution)

Hey folks. The shiny new Built-In Triggers for things we used to have to use big old Custom HTML tags to track before—Youtube tracking! Scroll depth! Element visibility!—have had a bit of time to bed in now. We had a look at changing over to the new built-in solutions everywhere we were using Custom HTML—if it's being done by Tag Manager itself, it has to be better, right? Right? Wrong. This issue is related to a fact that I've discovered through experience but not seen actually documented exc

Adam Englebright•18 Jan 2018

Activist analytics: using digital analytics to drive change

Hey folks, Adam here. I had quite a busy weekend last week - one that has now been documented in the national press! - and thought I'd share some thoughts about it on here. My journey into activist analytics I've been a member of the Labour Party and the related grassroots movement Momentum for several years now, but beyond a bit of leafleting here and there social anxiety has kept me away from the phonebanking, street stands and doorknocking that lie at the heart of party political activity.

Adam Englebright•26 Jul 2017

Free Google Analytics Health Check Template by Measurelab

Hey Folks, It's been a while since the last time I wrote anything on the blog so I thought I'd make it up to you with a little freebie. Why GA health checks are important One of the most common tasks at Measurelab (and I'm sure in many other analytics agencies) is to run a "health check" of the main features and configurations of the Google Analytics user interface. How the template works This varies in depth and level of detail depending on various factors but we do find it quite helpful

Juan Barros•17 Feb 2017

When GA just isn't enough - my #measurefest talk

<span style="font-weight: 400;">I spoke at <a href="http://www.measurefest.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">#Measurefest</a> in the Barbican last Friday. Here are the slides from my talk but I wanted to write a quick summary to give a bit more context as the slides on their own don’t tell the story. </span> When GA just isn't enough from darafitzgerald The title of the talk was "When GA just isn't enough". For some that know me this might sound like an unexpected title. I sp

Dara Fitzgerald•24 Nov 2016

How to integrate Optimizely with GTM & Universal Analytics

If you want to integrate your Optimizely experiment and variation data with Google’s Universal Analytics via Google Tag Manager, you will soon see that the official documentation assumes a custom‑coded implementation. It then instructs you to edit your GA pageview tag directly. If you are using Google Tag Manager, then you obviously will not want to follow this guidance as you probably have the Google Analytics pageview tag in a tag template. It is always advisable to keep custom JavaScript an

Steven Elliott•16 Sept 2016

Understanding GA non-interactive events: month 1 insights

Starting a new adventure in analytics When I first decided to quit my ohh-so-lucrative job in the investment banking, most of my friends and family thought I was going bonkers! Neither were they impressed with my idea to start a new career in Web Analytics, working for some small start-up based in Lewes (wait why exactly do you want to work in Loos?!?). I must say that I had my doubts as well - will I be able to adapt to a totally new working environment? Will I ever learn what all the cookies,

Magdalena Pajak•15 Sept 2016

GTM workspaces: how to manage multiple workspaces in Google Tag Manager

Exciting news in the world of analytics! Recently, Google has launched a new feature called Workspaces for both GTM and GTM 360 users. The goal of this new feature is to solve workflow challenges for multi-user teams working within the same container. Workspaces allow you to make changes in a specific instance of GTM, while others can work in a separate instance of the same container. Basically, when a Workspace is created, a new Container Draft is separated from the latest GTM container versi

Alex Cirstea•31 Aug 2016

Learn With Measurelab beta launch!

Measurelab already offers some of the <a href="https://www.measurelab.co.uk/training/">best in-person training around</a>, with monthly courses on <a href="https://www.measurelab.co.uk/training/google-tag-manager-training/">Google Tag Manager</a> and <a href="https://www.measurelab.co.uk/training/google-analytics-training/">Google Analytics</a>&nbsp;in London and <a href="https://www.measurelab.co.uk/training/google-analytics-training/">custom in-house training available on request</a>, but w

Adam Englebright•8 Jul 2016

The Measurelab Year of Self Betterment

As Measurelab, we have been running bi-monthly Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager training sessions up in London for nearly 18 months now. We like to keep the groups small enough (under 10) to be personable and really help each attendee out with their questions and unique&nbsp;requirements. Due to the success of these training events, we are now running them every month (see all the dates for&nbsp;<a href="https://www.measurelab.co.uktraining/google-analytics-training/">GA Training</a>&n

Daniel Perry-Reed•27 May 2016

Google Analytics 360 Suite: what it is & why it matters

So it's finally happened, Google has brought their enterprise-level analytics offerings together in one neat package: the Google Analytics 360 Suite! What they have done is re-branded Google Analytics Premium as Google Analytics 360 and Adometry as Google Attribution 360, and released 4 all new tools. What’s included in the suite: Google Audience Center 360 (beta) A data management platform (DMP) that helps understand and identify customers across channels, devices, campaigns, etc. Google

Daniel Perry-Reed•15 Mar 2016

We are Google Tag Manager Certified!

Measurelab is officially Google Tag Manager certified We are proud to announce that, following a rigorous testing process, Google have approved Measurelab to be certified partners for Google Tag Manager – re-affirming our position as one of the UK’s top Google Analytics consultancies, specifically when it comes to using Google Tag Manager. Why this certification matters As well as demonstrable advanced technical skills with Google Tag Manager implementations, a pre-requisite of the certifica

Mark Rochefort•10 Nov 2015

Google Tag Manager training course now available from Measurelab

Google Tag Manager training is now live Right, folks, it’s happening! Our new Google Tag Manager training workshops are now live and ready to be booked! Thank you! Thank you! It has taken a bit of thinking and planning but we’ve finally decided to go ahead with it and we’re pretty pleased with the end results. What the workshop covers We’ll take you from the very basics - what’s a tag management system and how it works - to the more techy stuff such as how to deploy different vendors and c

Juan Barros•2 Oct 2015

Top 5 GTMv2 Features

If you’re anything like me, you saw the GTM v2 update coming with an impending sense of dread. You thought “oh no, another interface that I’m going to have to get familiar with” or “oh no, a slightly different system that’ll have slightly different quirks and tics and I’ll have to spend months relearning how to use it properly, argh (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻”. Back in June when everything got auto-updated, I sent an email to one of our clients apologising for the change. But guess what? As with pretty muc

Adam Englebright•21 Jul 2015

GAIQ: How I prepared...and passed it!

It’s been exactly a month since I started to work at Measurelab, and so far it has been an amazing experience. Much of the industry jargon and tools are starting to sound familiar and I can make tea or coffee for almost anyone in the team without having to ask how they take it. In order to celebrate the fact that I had survived for a whole month, Mark suggested me to have a go at the Google Analytics Individual Qualification, (which I did..and passed!) For those of you that are not familia

Juan Barros•2 Dec 2014

Floods, Scroll Depth, Bonfire and lots of coffee: My first week at Measurelab

<p class="p1"><span class="s1">It’s been, without a doubt, an unusual first week. Upon arrival to the mind-blowing <a href="https://www.measurelab.co.ukcontact/"><span class="s2">Old Candlemakers</span></a> building in central Lewes, I walked into the office to see the team running up and down trying to clean up the mess: one of the roof windows was left open during the weekend and we ended up with a meeting room that looked more like a fish pond than a place to catch-up or meet clients. Fort

Juan Barros•10 Nov 2014

GTM’s new interface: public‑beta update, API & feature changes

Things move fast in the digital world. Even more so when the might of Google is behind a product. Even so, a complete overhaul of the Google Tag Manager interface is quite a leap - considering how accustomed we have become to seeing incremental changes in product development. This morning I was using Google Tag Manager as usual, this afternoon I noticed that an import/export feature had become available. That was great news in itself, as it opens up all sorts of possibilities - for example, link

Steven Elliott•15 Oct 2014

Adam's Analytics Adventure: Week 4

<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="http://measurelab2.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014-07-19-15.22.35-1024x768.jpg" class="kg-image" alt="Went for a wander around Lewes itself over the weekend. The images aren't super-relevant, but they're quite nice. This one is down near the Priory." loading="lazy" width="1024" height="768"><figcaption>Went for a wander around Lewes itself over the weekend. The images aren't super-relevant, but they're quite nice. This on

Adam Englebright•25 Jul 2014

Adam's Analytics Adventure: Week 2

<em>Because of the way events transpired this week, I’m going to go through a few notable things rather than a day-by-day (because that would be boring) and give them all pithy-ish subheads, like I’m a newspaper columnist or something.</em> Coffee habit Now that I work in a hip web 2.0 dotcom startup dealie, I clearly need to develop a coffee habit. I had my first cup from the office Nespresso machine (nary a burr grinder in sight - a disgrace) this afternoon – a purple pod marked ‘Arpegg

Adam Englebright•11 Jul 2014

How to set up Google Analytics Enhanced Ecommerce (5 easy steps)

If you are anything like me, you will have seen the fandangled new “enhanced” e-commerce reports that are starting to become available in Google Analytics accounts (N.B. - Universal web properties only) and thought “yes, I’ll have some of that”. The reports allow for much deeper analysis of shopping behaviour - to understand things like influence of product impressions on conversion - as well as providing much anticipated refund and voucher/ affiliate code support. In the spirit of catchy blog

Steven Elliott•30 Jun 2014

Google Tag Manager auto-event tracking - useful Tags, Macros and Rules for Google Analytics events

The recent introduction of <a href="http://analytics.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/no-code-required-auto-event-tracking.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">auto-event tracking</a>&nbsp;for <a href="http://www.google.com/tagmanager/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Google Tag Manager</a>&nbsp;was a welcome piece of news for many of us keen to remove custom jQuery from within the container. But it quickly became apparent that, to make real use of the auto-event tracking feature,

Mark Rochefort•25 Nov 2013

Migrate jQuery event listeners to GTM auto‑event listeners: a better way

Tag Containers are great. In a former life I was developer and I can really appreciate how much help they can be to people wanting to just add a "bit of code" to a website. But, as said former developer, I can also appreciate what a potential disaster it is to give the marketing guys the ability to add code to a website - outside of your carefully considered source control mechanisms and deployment routines. So - the recent announcement (there's quite a few on that link) from the team at Google

Steven Elliott•10 Oct 2013

GA Summit 2013: Key Google Analytics updates & insights

The theme of this years summit is a focus on helping customers in three areas: Access, Empower, Act. The slide above was shown by the GA team to summarise the 3 part theme. Babak Pahlavan (Director of Product Management, Google Analytics) let the crowd know that GA have made 70+ releases in 2013 so far, which makes sense on reflection given how busy the year has been. This has included major updates such as the global roll out of Universal Analytics, the introduction of the Attribution Modellin

Dara Fitzgerald•2 Oct 2013