TagMan: Empowering Data-Driven Campaigns Across Ad Exchanges

Identifying users across a multitude of ad exchanges has become critical to the success of campaigns run by advertisers, agencies and ad networks. London-based tag management firm, TagMan, is helping media buyers target users as they move through different sites.
TagMan’s underlying technology manages online marketing tags much more effectively. Increasingly, ad traders have been using the tag management service to track the full user journey, allowing them to re-target audiences across different ad exchange platforms.
Jon Baron, General Manager and Co-Founder of TagMan, took time last week to speak to Farneymedia about the company’s tag management technology and how it can help advertisers, agencies and ad networks when buying across the different trading platforms:
Can you give an overview of your technology? How it works? How it’s used by online media buyers?

The Industry is on the verge of a fundamental transition to data driven tools that will challenge the operational behavior at all levels of the advertising business: unorganized data will be a burden, not a benefit.
TagMan is the ultimate container solution, that all other tags can and will be operated and monitored within. It is built to provide the industry with a simple, efficient and vendor agnostic tool that helps manage the growing ‘tangle of tags’ on any website in their control. It remains independent of any publisher owned solution and also provides meaningful analysis.
One single piece of code on each page allows the following:
Cost Management
– De-duplicate all online marketing channels (why pay 3x for a conversion?).
– Define bespoke windows per channel. Affiliate a,b or c should over ride natural search on a “last click wins” model for applied attribution.
Data management
– The full user journey (paid and organic) to client site is tracked and can be harvested at user page level.
– Build rules to automatically fire re-targeting and behavioural targeting pixels. If a user’s basket value is greater than 1,000 then fire ‘high value customer’ pixels, If user basket value is less than 100 then fire ‘standard value customer’ re-targeting pixels. etc
Time management
– TagMan shifts tag implementation and data management away from IT specialists and into your own hands.
– No waiting for the next ‘site update’ in India or wherever the enterprise IT is outsourced to for tag implementation. TagMan’s web based interface makes controlling tags on client pages child’s play.
– There’s drag and drop functionality and intuitive UI. You can set live any network, bid, affiliate etc tag minutes after they arrive and determine how long it will be live. You can instantly get a helicopter view of all tags running on any given page. You can plug and play to determine which tag is creating latency costs that outweigh the benefit of tag itself.

Can you explain what a “universal container tag” is, and how it can help online campaigns?

The container collects rich and insightful data at all (channel, user and impression) levels. Effectiveness of campaigns is transparent and driven from the raw data. A single view of the customer is essential to making qualitative planning decisions.
The container tag can be used for ‘cookie matching’. TagMan is able to look and collect 3rd party ad-server cookies and match them to the same from any chosen analytics partner. This provides very rich data sets.
Specifically, you can see how your biggest channels interact and then look for inefficiencies. On brand terms… are your natural search and PPC overlapping? Are you wrongfully paying performance partners a full bounty – when the conversion has really come through your email program?

How does the TagMan technology benefit Advertisers and Agencies buying across ad exchanges? Can you explain how TagMan’s technology is being used by traders in the exchange marketplace?

As stated before the full user journey to client site is tracked and on that journey data can be harvested at user page level. For online ad exchange buyers they can build rules to automatically fire re-targeting and behavioural targeting pixels for example IF a user’s basket value is greater than 1,000 then fire ‘high value customer’ pixels, IF user basket value is less than 100 then fire ‘standard value customer’ re-targeting pixels. There are many different ways to segment users on site using TagMan’s container, there are unlimited possibilities. TagMan can fire all exchange pixels simultaneously. For certain US based clients we pass segment data into cross exchange bid management tools such as Invite Media; this is the ultimate way for buyers to leverage exchanges.

Can the technology also be used by ad networks for tracking and identifying users across multiple ad exchanges?

Certainly networks are interested in TagMan benefits such as ‘cookie matching’ which is TagMan’s ability to look match cookies between different tracking systems. Ad networks have shown an interest in being able to use TagMan to apply sophisticated rules to creating ad exchange segment pixels.

Do you licence your technology to ad networks and agencies?

Effectively, they are becoming the same thing. We do not discriminate on who can access our platform. The initial take up was smaller agencies who needed the help, but the larger legacy media companies are now seeing the value of an independent solution as do networks and even publishers.

You mentioned in a recent post that TagMan has been increasingly used as a “tag bucket” and “pixel server” by ad networks and agencies trading on ad exchanges. Can you explain what these terms are – and how they relate to exchanges?

‘Tag bucket’ is another way to describe a ‘container’. TagMan containers can hold unlimited tags within them and from every provider. For example, CPA display beacon tags, website analytics tags, conversion tags and many more. Whatever tag you have it can be housed within TagMan. When we talk about a ‘pixel server’ we’re referring to TagMan’s ability to fire 3rd party pixels on the client’s behalf. The pixels are mainly for re-targeting and behavioral targeting purposes.

Who owns the data that TagMan manages and passes to other parties?

Where data is the new currency for the digital marketing ecosystem, TagMan is the trusted ‘online banking’ system. While Adservers become AdNetworks become Agencies and use your data to fund their fights for market share; TagMan provides a 100% vendor agnostic solution. We are deliberately positioned to never own your data, share your data or use your data; but be in an immediate position to help show you who you work with can do so.

Do you think that agencies and networks are now starting to see the benefits of exchanges and ad trading platforms? Have you seen a rise in the use of your technology in exchange media buys?

Absolutely. Our experience in the US is that the exchanges and trading platforms are being the ‘norm’ in their requirements for using TagMan. In the UK there are more conversations and there are some exciting start ups specialising in this area such at Infectious Media and The Exchange Lab.

TagMan is helping media buyers to identify specific users across the ad exchanges. Its technology is enabling advertisers and agencies to re-target the audience they want to reach. The company is rightly excited about how ad traders are using its platform – and is looking forward to new buyers entering the exchange space.