Problems with the “Autoblock” approach to Consent Management

In my post on setting up Onetrust, I mention how problematic Autoblock can be, but it comes up often enough that I decided it merited its own post, because enabling any Consent Management Platform (CMP)’s Autoblock functionality is a big deal, with far-reaching implications.


There are two approaches to consent management:

  1. Use your Consent Management Platform to create banners and keep track of user’s consent status. The CMP doesn’t affect what tags fire at all, it merely keeps track of user’s consent. Then you use your Tag Manager to get info from the CMP about what has been consented, then use conditions in your marketing tag rules, and the ECID opt-in service for Analytics and Target, to determine what tags are ok to fire.
  2. Use the Consent Management Platform to create banners, track user’s consent status, and block any files or cookies that try to load without consent. Your Tag Management System has essentially no control. You don’t have to mess with extra conditions in Launch (which some see as a perk), but someone has to maintain the CMS so it knows which scripts and cookies to allow to fire.

“Autoblock” is what we call that CMP functionality that proactively blocks any non-consented technology from loading. Instead of counting on you to manage which vendor code gets to run, it lets you run all your tag code, then it just blocks any non-consented files or cookies from actually loading.

While that post was specific to OneTrust, this is actually relevant for most Consent Management Platforms. I know for sure Cookiebot, Osano, Trustarc and Ensighten can use it, and I’m pretty sure every other CMP does too, because it lets their salespeople say that setting up their tool “takes no effort at all!”

Call it what it is: consent management is complicated

We often get ourselves in trouble in our industry by thinking a simple solution will solve a complicated problem. But simple solutions often require complicated workarounds to actually work in the real world. Going with the “simple” solution may actually create more work and more points of failure.

The alternative to using Autoblock is to use the consent preferences gathered by your CMP to create conditions in your TMS to decide which vendor’s code gets to run. This sounds like more work, and sounds more prone to human error, but after reading this post I hope you’ll understand that Autoblock doesn’t remove human effort (and the possibility for error), it just shifts it.

Part of the complexity comes from the fact that for all CMPs I’ve worked with, Autoblock doesn’t just block cookies, it blocks scripts that might be setting cookies. The theory behind this is sound enough: privacy compliance shouldn’t just be about cookies, it should be about data collection. Lots of tracking can happen without cookies, and cookie names can change even if script locations do not. If a user hasn’t consented to Analytics tracking, we don’t want to just block my Adobe AMCV cookie, we want to block the appMeasurement script from trying to identify me and build beacons about my user experience. So even though everyone talks about CMPs in terms of cookies, and even most consent banners only really mention cookies, we’re usually talking about much more. Just to drive it home, because this is key to understanding how CMPs work: CMPs affect scripts AND cookies.

Also, Autoblock is a binary thing: though you can have a “hybrid” approach that uses both TMS conditions and Autoblock, Autoblock is either on (and potentially affecting everything) or off (leaving it entirely up to your TMS).

Now we’re clear on that, let’s talk about reasons to avoid Autoblock (regardless of which Consent Management Platform you use). Each CMP implements Autoblock slightly differently, and some approaches work better than others, but they all have some common pitfalls.

Complication #1: Many Points of Failure

As I said in my other post, most problems I’ve seen with CMPs have been because of Autoblock functionality. In fact, I have only seen one deployment where it didn’t cause any major problems. Even though consent management is NOT my main role, I somehow keep hearing about Autoblock issues:

  • In a client’s Osano POC, we saw consented analytics beacons firing in duplicate or triplicate with no explanation, inflating our Analytics data.
  • That same POC caused a bunch of JavaScript errors, even on site-essential scripts, because Autoblock was changing the order things loaded in or the speed in which they loaded.
  • One org I know of lost 2 months of consented Adobe Analytics data because of a misconfiguration in Ensighten. They didn’t lose ALL data, or they would have spotted the problem sooner- they just thought they had abysmally low opt-in rates, not that 30% of their data was blocked even when users opted in.
  • Another org using Cookiebot has a consumer lawsuit on their hands because an old Adobe visitorApi.js file somehow snuck through their Autoblock.
  • Just now, trying to test out just how OneTrust would handle AudioEye, nothing I did could get my AudioEye Script to fire if Autoblock was on. (The problem may very well have been user error- I didn’t spend too much time troubleshooting.)
  • A week or two back, I was brought into a call with a non-client to discuss a timing issue that was causing cookies to be created even with Autoblock on. The vendor had suggested a manual workaround that involved writing a lot of custom code to manually manipulate cookies.
  • The next day, someone else reached out in response to my OneTrust blog post to let me know they had just discovered that because of an issue with hashing, their Autoblock file had exploded in size, causing a sudden traffic deflation issue and impacting their page performance for months. It took a lot of resources to track down the issue, and even then they might not have spotted it if they hadn’t been running regular Observepoint scans.

Time and time again, I see troubleshooting and maintaining Autoblock taking more resources than a TMS-condition-based approach would. Again, I’ll admit a number of these problems could have been from user error. But users do err.

Complication #2: Cookie/script inventory management

Regardless of the CMP, Autoblock functionality requires some sort of inventory of all the cookies and scripts your marTech vendors may be using, so that it can know what to block and what to allow. This is often where most of the “work” of maintaining a CMP comes from. There is usually some list of all possible cookies on your site that someone is going to have to sort through and maintain. Such lists can take a lot of effort and knowledge to maintain. I’ve seen these inventory lists get hundreds of items long and require weekly upkeep, forcing orgs to shift their efforts from making sure they’re using their data in compliant ways, to doing detective work on where obscure cookies like “ltkpopup-session-depth” come from and whether or not they are necessary for your site to function.

Some CMPs allow you to filter this list down to the user, so by clicking through somewhere on your banner, the user can see documentation on all the types of cookies possibly set on your site:

I am not a lawyer, but a bit of research seems to suggest this is not legally required by GDPR or any of the other major regulations (though I’ll admit there may be some reasons lawyers want you to). In fact, from my non-lawyerly view, such lists may be a liability because keeping it 100% accurate would be very difficult for most sites. So I don’t actually see this in-depth public-facing cookie documentation as a worthy benefit.

Most CMPs (including OneTrust) will scan your site and let you know what cookies and scripts it found. Some may fill in some knowledge- for example, OneTrust’s Cookiepedia knows that “_gcl_aw” is likely tied to Adwords and belongs in the Marketing category- but others may rely entirely on you to categorize each cookie appropriately. Some CMPs may only look at cookies and scripts set by your site; others (like one TMS/CMP that rhymes with “enlighten”) may make you categorize all cookies and scripts that a user’s browser extensions may be bringing with them- things that have nothing to do with your site (or what you’re liable for).

One reason keeping such an inventory is so difficult is the often-unclear relationship between scripts/cookies and what purpose they serve. The marTech vendors don’t make it easy- because of acquisitions, concern about optics, or any number of other reasons, most vendors use multiple domains and set multiple cookies which often don’t have a clear association with their vendor. As part of my Tagging Overload presentation last summer, I made an inventory of 200+ common domain/vendor associations but even that is far from comprehensive (and probably far out of date by now). And if cookies are set on your own domain, it can be even harder to know if they require consent, or if your own developers use them to make your site function properly. Miscategorization could mean a lawsuit, or it could mean broken website functionality.

Let’s take two examples:

Many sites use a tool called AudioEye, which makes a site more accessible (for instance, by making it easier for Screen Readers to describe content to blind users) to stay compliant with regulations from the American Disabilities Act (ADA). I’m not a lawyer, but a strong case could be made for AudioEye being considered Strictly Necessary and therefore not require opt-in.

To add AudioEye to my site, I essentially just add a couple lines of code that reference a single .js file (https://ws.audioeye.com/ae.js). That file then brings in a bunch of other files:

Between those scripts, a few cookies get set. OneTrust picked up these third-party cookies in its scans:

(Though it did not seem to pick up on the first-party _aeaid cookie so I may need to flag that myself.) These cookies and domain are not currently in OneTrust’s Cookiepedia, and/or are incorrectly categorized as Marketing cookies. So now, instead of keeping track of the single line of code I added to the site, I’ve got a dozen+ javascript files, 5 third-party cookies, and 1 first-party cookie, for a single vendor. I’m going to need to make sure that Autoblock knows that these are all “Strictly Necessary”, not for marketing or targeting.

Let’s look at Facebook for a Marketing Pixel example next: the pixel script they give me loads one JS file, fbevents.js. But that file actually loads another file from “connect.facebook.net/signals/config/”. On the site I’m currently looking at, between those two files, Facebook sets four third-party “.facebook.com” cookies (“usida”, “fr”, “wd”, and “datr”) and one first-party cookie (“_fbp”).

If I’m relying on my TMS conditions to manage tags based on consent (instead of Autoblock), I can nip that all in the bud by not letting the code that loads that fbevents.js file to ever run to begin with. I don’t need to know that Facebook uses multiple JS files and sets a _fbp cookie on my domain- I just don’t run the script that might set any cookies to begin with.

By contrast, with most Autoblock set ups, the CMP might let me know it found two FB scripts, 4 third-party cookies and 1 first-party cookie on my site. It might suggest categorizations for known cookies for me (OneTrust is pretty good about that; some other CMPs are not), or it may count on me to know which categories they belong to, and which cookies are “strictly necessary” or not. I’d need to keep this list updated- whether or not I’m changing the tags on my site, Facebook might start setting cookies under a different name.

From what I can tell (because it’s not transparent in the interface), OneTrust then finds the scripts setting those cookies and blocks those scripts. I can’t really categorize the scripts themselves in the OneTrust interface. While other CMPs may focus on the scripts and not the cookies, OneTrust’s cookie-centric approach leaves me with very little control in the interface of which scripts I want to have fire.

(To be fair, if Autoblock blocked the fbevents.js file, it would stop all the rest from happening… but the cookie inventories seldom understand that nuance, so you still have 5+ cookies and 2+ scripts to categorize.)

But even once this list is in place and correct, you still may need to do more work to get it to work with your site.

Some CMPs, like OneTrust, use a one-size-fits-all approach: things are either on “strictly necessary” or they get blocked. You can categorize cookies as strictly necessary or not, but as far as I can tell, there is no where within the OneTrust interface to tell it a script is necessary (and if my AudioEye javascript is blocked, then it doesn’t matter that I’m allowing AudioEye to set cookies.) Instead, if I need to allow a script, I can add a custom attribute to the html of the tag:

<script data-ot-ignore src="examplescript.com/javascript.js"></script>

(This goes to show: never believe a vendor that says you can implement their solution without developer work. It’s too good to be true that you could become compliant, not break your site, and not have to talk to a developer.)

Govern Tags, Not Cookies

You can be privacy-compliant without a complete list of third-party cookies. Don’t get me wrong, such a list could be handy, especially if you can keep it accurate and up-to-date. And by all means, you should have some sort of inventory of the tags on your site.

If you know what tags you are firing on your site, you can stop tracking at the source, by stopping those tags. Would you rather take the time to have a condition on your Salesforce tag in your TMS that stops it from ever firing, or take the time to find out that cookies on “cdn.krxd.net” come from Salesforce? There’s no magic bullet solution, either way.

Complication #3: Ownership

Most companies are struggling to find the right owner for maintaining a CMP. Lawyers know the regulations but may have no clue what an AMCV cookie does; marketers may know that they are using TradeDesk for advertising, but have no idea that it uses the domain adsrvr.org; developers may know that the third-party scripts from fonts.googleapis.com affect the visual appearance of the site and have nothing to do with marketing, but have no clue about Facebook cookeis.

I won’t pretend that moving away from Autoblock will clear up all the ownership issues. BUT, when the person deploying the tag (in the TMS) also has primary control of not firing the tag (via conditions in the TMS), it does simplify things.

Complication #4: No Nuance in Categories

For OneTrust at least, Autoblock is all-or-nothing; from what I understand, there are no categories beyond “strictly necessary” and “not strictly necessary”. Someone can’t opt for Analytics tracking but no Marketing tracking.

Complication #5: Timing

If you don’t have OneTrust’s library loading early enough, it may not be there in time to block early-loading scripts and cookies, leaving you with incomplete coverage. Whereas TMS conditions can have some defaults built in that don’t rely on the OneTrust script having been fully loaded (I write about one way to do that in my other post).

Complication #6: It can needlessly lose Adobe Data by not taking advantage of the Adobe Opt-In Service.

For Adobe Analytics tracking in a opt-in-only scenario, Autoblock limits the advantages of using the ECID Opt-In Service. The ECID Opt-In service doesn’t just kill any tracking until you have consent- it kind of holds “preconsented” tracking to the side, so once the user DOES consent, you don’t lose that data that would have been sent when the page loaded. If you’re relying only on Autoblock, you can never get that pre-consented data back. You’d need to re-run any logic that would have fired on your page view.

Complication #7: Page Performance

Autoblock has the potential to have a major impact on page performance, though this varies widely by CMP vendor. Depending on how they work, they may be adding a “gate keeping process” to every asset that loads on your site.

I haven’t tested OneTrust, but I did test another CMP’s autoblock feature and found it slowed the page’s load time up to 40%! (To be fair, I do think it was an inferior tool and hopefully other CMPs aren’t that bad.)

This is a very hard thing to test- did any changes in performance come about because of tags/scripts not firing, or because of the inherent weight of the CMP library, or because of Autoblock? I’d love to hear if any one else has found a good way to test or observed any changes in performance based on Autoblock functionality.

On the other hand, one case FOR Autoblock:

There is at least one situation in which you may need to rely on Autoblock: if you have any scripts or cookies you need to block that are NOT managed by your TMS. In order to use a condition-based approach, you have to be able to add some conditional logic to every script that needs consent. Autoblock doesn’t care if a script comes from your TMS or not- it applies to everything. If you are not confident that your TMS has full control over all tags that need consent, Autoblock may be for you.

Conclusion

I am not saying no one should use Autoblock. It has its uses. Just make the decision with a full understanding of the implications, and an awareness of what other options may look like.

I’m curious to hear other’s thoughts and experiences.

Silly Launch Builder Chime

I spend way too much time on a daily basis waiting for Launch libraries to build- on particularly bloated libraries, I’ve had it take up to two minutes. And, with my ADHD, I get too easily distracted during that wait time. It’s a major productivity killer.

So I figured out I can throw this code in as a Live Expression in my Chrome Console:

if (document.location.href.indexOf("data-collection/tags/") != -1 || document.location.href.indexOf("reactor-lens/tags/")!= -1) {window.launchChimer = window.launchChimer || false;if (document.querySelectorAll(".library .spectrum-CircleLoader.spectrum-CircleLoader--small").length > 0 && !window.launchChimer){window.launchChimer = true} else if (document.querySelectorAll(".library .spectrum-CircleLoader.spectrum-CircleLoader--small").length == 0 && window.launchChimer == true) {var snd = new Audio("http://soundbible.com/grab.php?id=1599&type=wav");snd.play();window.launchChimer = false}}

Like this:

And it chimes when the loading icon stops spinning.

I got the sound file from soundbible– you could replace it with whatever you want. Originally I had it pull from a sound that already exists on any mac (as found on stack overflow) but it made the script ugly and long.

If it isn’t working for you, double check which frame your Live Expression is trying to be on. For me, it automatically went to the “Main Content” frame, which is where it works best, but it sounds like for some folks, you may need to manually select it:

There are better ways to do this. I know this. If I had more hours in the day, I could even make a decent Chrome extension out of it. But this works for now, and I’ve already held on to this for months without blogging it, waiting for time to make it cooler, and it would appear that time is never going to come, so… here’s my imperfect solution.

Consider this a beta. I fully expect something about it will not work in some situation. Please let me know how it goes for you. Or if anyone wants to take it and improve upon it, I’d appreciate it!

How I got OneTrust to Work with Adobe Launch

Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer. Please don’t take any of this post as legal advice. I claim no responsibility for how the information in this post is used. Each organization needs to work with their lawyers to ensure their setup is compliant. Please test thoroughly and often to make sure your OneTrust set up is working as expected.

You’ll note I’m not calling this “The Best Way to set up OneTrust in Launch”, because I don’t know if this IS the best way; it’s just the only way I could get it all to work in my particular situation. If folks have found other potentially better ways I’d love to exchange knowledge! I will be updating this post if and/or when I learn new things.

To be honest, this is one of the scarier posts I’ve written (and not just for legal reasons)- I fully expect someone to say “this is a really weird way of doing it” (heaven knows I’ve said to myself “there must be a better way”). And I do know there are probably a few places where I could simplify/optimize. But I’ve talked to a lot of different people trying to set up OneTrust, and no one has ever been able to give me a different/better way yet, and I’m getting asked weekly how I’ve managed to get it to work, so here goes!

While this post is very specific to Adobe Launch*, a lot of the script and logic could apply to any TMS/Adobe Analytics setup. Some of it could even apply to other Consent Management Platforms (CMPs).

This post is long, and while the topic is complicated, much of what I’ve included is just for reference, so please don’t feel overwhelmed. We’ve got this.

Also, don’t be evil. I primarily work with first-party analytics (ie, Adobe Analytics), and I have no ethical compunctions about doing so. The only impact we have on the user is we improve website experiences (and I don’t mean that in a “we show better ads” way… I mean our focus is the actual site user experience). That said, I don’t want to “trick” the user into allowing it, and I want them to be informed about it. But consent management (and tag management) also applies to stuff that can be very ethically (not to mention legally) questionable. Prioritize your user’s privacy. Keep them informed. Remember most regulations don’t care specifically about cookies, they care about what you are doing with user’s data (which often includes but is not limited to cookies). There is no “getting around” requests for privacy. (That goes for server-side tracking, too, by the way.)

My Goals With This Setup (Opt-In and Opt-Out)

I’ve worked with OneTrust*** and Launch a fair amount, but for one project in particular, I had nearly complete ownership of it- this is the project I’m basing this post off.

Their set up had to work for a Launch property that has users throughout the US, as well as in a few EU countries, meaning we need to account for situations where we can track only if the user has opted in (GDPR), AND situations where we can track until the user has opted out (most non-GDPR regulations, like California’s CCPA**).

A diagram showing groups of people before and after being presented with two types of prompts: one which opts the user in to tracking (GDPR-style), and another that allows them to opt out. Colors indicate which groups get to be tracked.

We’ve set up two OneTrust templates and two Geolocation rules. Fortunately, OneTrust uses geolocation to tell which banner they need to show the user, and whether they should be considered opted-in or opted-out by default. Unfortunately, on the very first page view, if OneTrust hasn’t had a full chance to run its script and define those categories, you can have timing issues, so we’ll have to work around that in this solution.

Some organizations choose to just treat EVERYONE as opt-in-only, including in the US where that is not legally necessary. This definitely is the legally safest choice but given that most orgs get opt-in rates of 30-50%, you may end up losing 50-70% of your data. I’ve seen one site in the UK that only had 11% of users opt in, though if you optimize your banner and really think through how you present information to your users, you should be able to get it much much higher. Either way, our goal here was to opt-in as many people as we legally/ethically could.

OneTrust Setup

I’m not going to get too into too much detail here about the actual configuration in OneTrust; OneTrust’s documentation is pretty thorough (though guilty of the atrocity of requiring you to login to access it***) and this post is more than long enough already. This whole post assumes you have an entirely correct and compliant set up in OneTrust including that you’ve correctly created your “Categorizations”, you’ve created banners (though I do have tips for working with their CSS- ping me on twitter or slack if it’s giving you trouble), and you’ve made sure your Geolocation rules are set up correctly (make sure you check the “Do Not Track” and “Global Privacy Control” options!)

A screenshot from OneTrust's geolocation rules showing where you can check boxes to honor Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control.

Don’t use Autoblock if you can help it

As you publish a script in OneTrust, it gives you an option to toggle on Automatic Blocking of Cookies, also known as Autoblock:

A screenshot of the toggle in OneTrust's publishing flow which allows you to enable Automatic Blocking of Cookies

Autoblock basically allows itself to become a middle man between your user and anything your site is trying to load. Everything gets routed through it and it gets to choose which requests to block or allow, based on what the user has consented to. This may be tempting… in theory, you could leave all of your tags and cookies in OneTrust’s hands and not have to worry about setting up conditions in your TMS. (I’ve heard a few people mention how much this feels like when TMSes were touted as “one simple line of code that does all the work for you!”)

But please consider it only as a last resort! Yes, turning off Autoblock and instead using conditions to decide which tags to fire looks like a lot more work, but it’s more flexible, and gives you more control and visibility. (And, to be honest, getting Autoblock to work the way you want may end up being more work than you expect, anyways.) I had a whole section of this post devoted to Autoblock, but it was enough it merited a post of its own. So please, before deciding to use Autoblock, get enough information to make an informed decision.

Why not use OneTrust to block Launch altogether?

This is another kind of lazy (or overzealous) solution I’ve seen folks try: just don’t load your TMS library at all until the user has consented to some tracking. Certainly, it is a fairly safe approach (assuming you don’t have anything on your site, outside of your TMS, that needs consent). It really limits your flexibility, though. Especially if you have different categories for consent, you may want to fire analytics (performance category) but not Doubleclick (marketing/targeting category). Or you may have script in your TMS that doesn’t require consent… for instance, I know of one site that uses Launch to deploy some ADA compliance updates (hardly a best practice, but it happens). Or your TMS may have code in it that helps keep you compliant by managing cookies, etc.

In an opt-out scenario, such an approach seems a bit silly- by the time they opt out, your TMS has already loaded and may continue tracking link clicks, etc.

In an opt-in/GDPR scenario, there is a key reason I don’t like this approach: the ECID Opt-In Service, when set up properly, is very good at holding on to tracking until there is consent.

So if my page loads, and we don’t have consent, but my Page Load rule normally would have set variables and fire a beacon… those actions get queued up, so to speak, for once the user DOES consent. Once they click the “allow all” button, my Page Load rule doesn’t re-run, but the things it would have done initially, like sending page view data to Adobe, finally get to fire. That way, you don’t have to either fire a new rule after acceptance, or wait until the next page view, to get information about that first critical page view (which often includes things like Campaign tracking codes or session referrer information).

Why not use the OneTrust Launch Extension?

I hate to say it, but the OneTrust extension doesn’t offer many advantages***. There is still enough you have to set up and tweak outside of it that in the end, you may as well just skip using it. Not using it keeps everything transparent, too, which I like.

Global “True” Page Top Rule

The setup we used needed a rule that runs before anything else possibly even starts. This is particularly important if you are firing your OneTrust library from within Launch, but you may want it either way, to set up compliance logic before anything else fires.

We didn’t even use “Page Top” as the trigger; rather we used a little trick that ensures it really is the first thing to run: we create an Custom Code Event that just contains one line of code:

trigger();

And we set the order on that to -1 (or 0 or 1… just make sure it’s a lower number than anything else):

A screenshot from Adobe Launch showing Event Configuration based on the custom code of "trigger();"

That may all seem overkill (and it may very well be) but it gives us some peace of mind, without negative side effects.

Inserting the OneTrust library (from within Launch, if you must)

Ideally you would have your devs insert the OneTrust library directly on the page, as high on the page as possible. This will give you the best chance to not have timing issues. To be clear: this is my recommendation. If you’re going that route, skip to the “Set up consent data elements” section.

But we live in the real world, where sometimes we have to work with what’s available. In this particular client case, a hard-coded reference to OneTrust wasn’t a practical option at the time, so we needed to add our OneTrust libraries into the Page Top rule we just created.

We put a single Custom Code Action in this rule, which calls on our OneTrust library. You can get these code snippets from within OneTrust- the important part is the data-domain-script. Note, you can get both a test script and a production script snippet from OneTrust, similar to how Launch has a dev environment to test your changes before you go to prod. Just make sure you’re using the right one for the stage you’re at.

A screenshot from a Custom code action in Adobe Launch, showing HTML references to the oneTrust testing and production libraries.

We’ll also use this rule and code block to fire our Adobe/ECID consent, but we’ll come back to that later.

Set up consent data elements

I tend to have one master “Onetrust Consent Groups” data element, then data elements for each category:

A screenshot from Launch showing 4 data elements: "onetrust consent groups", "onetrust consent: marketing", "onetrust consent: performance" and "onetrust consent: targeting"

For the master consent groups data element, we have a few things we need to consider. OneTrust provides two places to see what groups your user is in:

1. The most supported-by-OneTrust approach is to use a Javascript object, window.OnetrustActiveGroups, which returns a value like this:
‘,C0001,C0003,C0007,C0004,C0002,’
These codes correspond to the Categories you set up in OneTrust. You can view YOUR Categories by going to Categorizations>Categories.

2. An “OptanonConsent” cookie, which I’m pretty sure they don’t particularly want us using, but it can be handy because once it is created, it’s accessible as a page loads, before that window.OnetrustActiveGroups object is. It returns a value like this:

isGpcEnabled=0&datestamp=Tue+Mar+14+2023+12:10:28+GMT-0400+(Eastern+Daylight+Time)&version=202212.1.0&isIABGlobal=false&hosts=&landingPath=NotLandingPage&groups=C0001:1,C0003:1,C0007:1,C0004:1,C0002:1&AwaitingReconsent=false&geolocation=US;GAConsoleNetwork request blockingSearchIssuestop

…which is a bit messy, but potentially useable. I don’t currently use it in my solution but I figured I’d note it because I have seen others use it.

Important: Timing Issues for opt-in land (GDPR)

(To be clear, much of this section is only needed for folks who have timing issues because their OneTrust library is loaded by Launch or isn’t loading before Launch starts trying to do stuff.)

The problem is, if your OneTrust library is not called as high on the page as possible, there is a chance that OnetrustActiveGroups JavaScript object won’t exist when you need it; on each page load, it has to wait for the OneTrust library to create it. And the cookie only exists after the first time the OneTrust library loads… meaning if it’s the user’s first page view, you won’t know whether they count as opted-in or opted-out until after the OneTrust library loads! That’s one reason you should put the OneTrust library as high on your page as possible. But if you can’t, or you just want a failsafe, you can define some default consent groups. This would be simple if you were in a everyone-is-auto-opted-in scenario, or a everyone-is-auto-opted-out scenario. Where it gets fun is when you need to account for both.

Fortunately, my client already has a reliable method to tell me the user’s country (and even continent!) I’ll be honest, I’m not sure what I would have done otherwise, because we have to be able to detect the user’s jurisdiction to decide if they should be auto-opted-in or auto-opted-out. I have some theories of other ways we could do this but I’m glad I already had a reliable way to do it. Here is what I did for my “onetrust consent groups” data element:

try {
  var consentGroups=""
    if(window.OnetrustActiveGroups){
        consentGroups=window.OnetrustActiveGroups //if this exists and is accurate, use it. We often have a timing issue though. So, our back up options:
    }else if( _satellite.cookie.get("OptConsentGroups")){
        consentGroups=_satellite.cookie.get("OptConsentGroups") //if we've previously gotten the consent groups, we don't have to worry about the timing with onetrust, we just grab it from a cookie that we create
    }else if(_satellite.getVar("continentCode")=="eu" || navigator.globalPrivacyControl==1 || navigator.doNotTrack==1){//if no previous permissions, but in the EU or have GPC or DNT enabled, opt OUT of all not-strictly-necessary
        consentGroups=',C0001,'
    }else{ //everyone NOT in the EU who doesn't have GPC or DNT gets auto-opted-in to all categories
        consentGroups=',C0003,C0001,C0007,C0004,C0002,'
    }

    //store groups in a cookie 
    _satellite.cookie.set("OptConsentGroups", consentGroups, {expires: 360, samesite:"lax", secure:true, domain: "example.com"})

    return consentGroups;

} catch (e) {
	_satellite.logger.info("onetrust error:" + e);
}

Basically, if OneTrust has loaded, great, let’s use their JS object. If not, then based on the user’s location or privacy settings, we auto-opt them in or out of all categories (aside from “strictly necessary”). Then we create our OWN cookie, OptConsentGroups, so it’ll be easily accessible early on in the next page load.

NOTE: YOUR CATEGORIES WILL VARY. C0002 is for performance cookies for this particular client, based on how they have their categories set up within OneTrust. You will need to figure out how to identify the categories for your set up.

This data element gets referenced in a few places, meaning it is constantly getting updated, in case preferences change.

Set up data elements for each category

Once that data element exists, I create data elements for each category. My “onetrust consent: marketing” data element looks like this:

var consentGroups=_satellite.getVar("onetrust consent groups")||"" 

if(consentGroups.indexOf("C0007")!=-1){
  return "true"
}else{
  return "false"
}

I’ll use these to create conditions for any of my rules that contain non-Adobe tracking. Adobe rules don’t need conditions, they’re handled by the Experience Cloud Opt-in service.

Set up the ECID Opt-in Service

This is how I configured the Experience Cloud ID Service extension, essentially shifting all the work to my “onetrust consent: adobe” data element:

A screenshot of the ECID extension configuration from within Launch. Enable Opt In is toggled to "yes", and the previous permissions field says %onetrust consent: adobe%"

That “onetrust consent: adobe” data element looks like this:

var consentGroups=_satellite.getVar("onetrust consent groups")
var consent=false //false by default

//set per adobe category (we're treating all three- analytics, ecid and target- as performance. Your situation may merit a different split)
if(consentGroups.indexOf("C0002")!=-1){ //C0002= performance cookies
	var consent=true
}

//_satellite.logger.info("onetrust consent groups:" + consentGroups) //handy for debugging
return { aa: consent, target: consent, ecid: consent };

It checks if the user has consented to “performance” tracking, and if so, returns an object like this:

{aa: true, target: true, ecid: true}

This is the format that that “previous permission”/pre-opt-in approvals piece of the ECID is looking for. I’d love to say I learned that in the Adobe Documentation, but unless I’m missing something obvious, you have to backwards-engineer their code example to figure it out. Fortunately, this blog post by Abhinav Puri documents it all nicely.

(But wait, shouldn’t Adobe Target be categorized as “Targeting”? You should definitely ask your lawyers, but by my reasoning, the Targeting category is for targeted advertising and retargeting. Adobe Target may be named Target, but it is primarily a user experience/performance tool. It doesn’t chase you around the internet with personally-relevant advertising.)

Setting up the extension with this data element will cover Adobe permissions on page load, before the user interacts with the banner.

(In theory, this ECID extension part is the main thing the OneTrust extension would help with. But I like keeping all of the logic very transparent. And I’m a control freak that doesn’t trust vendor code I haven’t thoroughly tested.)

Updating Permissions (Banner Interaction)

To update permissions when the user has changed their preferences (including their initial reaction to the banner), I added code to my Page Top rule, within the OptanonWrapper() function, which is functionality provided by OneTrust that fires when OneTrust library first loads, as well as whenever there is a change to the user’s permissions:

<script type="text/javascript">
function OptanonWrapper() { //this function runs any time there are changes to one trust
  var consentSettings=_satellite.getVar("onetrust consent: adobe")   
  if(consentSettings.ecid===true){ //experience cloud ID service
      adobe.optIn.approve('ecid',true);
  }else{adobe.optIn.deny('ecid',true);}
  
  if(consentSettings.aa===true){ //analytics
      adobe.optIn.approve('aa',true);
  }else{adobe.optIn.deny('aa',true);}
  
  if(consentSettings.target===true){ //target, obv
      adobe.optIn.approve('target',true);
  }else{adobe.optIn.deny('target',true);}
  
  adobe.optIn.complete();
}
</script>

(In theory I could simplify this a bit since all three categories pretty much always have the same consent, but I wanted this to be flexible for potential changes in the future.) So now that rule looks like this:

A screenshot from Adobe Launch showing the above code block placed within the same rule/code that referenced our OneTrust library.

(If you’re not deploying your OneTrust Library through Launch, then lines 1-7 don’t apply.)

Set up Rule Conditions

Fortunately, the ECID Opt-in Service will handle everything Adobe-related: you do NOT need to take further action, such as adding Rule Conditions to all rules with Analytics actions, in order for Analytics to not fire when it shouldn’t. The rules will still fire but they will not send anything to Analytics or Target (yet).

Marketing tags, however, need to be explicitly told to pay attention to the user’s consent preferences. This is, unfortunately, still a very manual process. First, you may need to make your rules a little more category-based. In general it’s easiest if for any particular rule event/condition combo, if you have your performance-category actions together in one rule, and your marketing/targeting actions in a separate rule. We were already generally following that, but there were a few rules that had both analytics and marketing tags- for those, I copied the rule and deleted analytics out of one of them and deleted the marketing tags out of the other one, resulting in one analytics-only rule and one marketing-tag-only rule. The analytics-only rule is fine as-is (thanks, ECID!) but the marketing tag rule needs an extra condition.

If your entire rule falls into one consent category, then it’s as simple as adding a condition where “%onetrust consent: marketing%” equals “true”:

A screenshot from Adobe Launch which shows a rule with the condition of "%onetrust consent: marketing% equals true"

If, however, you need to use conditions within your code to decide what fires and what doesn’t (perhaps your rules don’t neatly align with your categories), that might look like this:

if(_satellite.getVar("onetrust consent: marketing")=="true"){
  //insert code for marketing tag here
}

If someone out there has some extra time on their hands and wanted to write a Launch API function that would automatically add such a condition to all rules, that sure would be swell. In the meantime, I tend to take this approach: open my list of rules, and starting at the top, left-click on each rule while holding down cmd (or ctrl for a PC). This will open each rule in a new tab, while leaving your Rule List tab alone so you can keep track of what you’ve done and not done.

A screenshot showing a ridiculous number of Adobe Launch tabs open in Chrome.

Then work you way through the tabs, adding your condition, saving, then closing that tab. I’ll often open 10-15 at a time, being careful to note where in the rule list I stop. When you’re done, you can use something like Tagtician to export your whole library and make sure you didn’t miss anything.

Side Note: Don’t forget to honor non-banner-based opt-outs!

Part of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and others like it, is that sites must have a “Do Not Sell My Personal Info” page where the user can opt out, or view/delete/modify what data you have on them. Lawyers have generally been pretty good about making sure orgs get these pages in place- you probably already have one. Often, these pages are set up to sync up with the org’s CRM… if r.swanson@pawnee.gov fills out a form to opt out of tracking, then the CRM may delete all the info they have for dear R.Swanson, and/or someone may use the Adobe Privacy API or the Adobe Privacy JS to delete/edit/modify/view the Adobe data on that user. That’s all as it should be. The problem is, this process often exists completely separately from the Consent Management Platform. You may have deleted the person for your backend systems, but you’re still setting cookies and collecting data on the site!

Make sure that your Tag Manager knows when these kind of opt-outs occurs and honors them. OneTrust does have a way of tapping into those forms, though I can’t find any public documentation other than this general good advice about CCPA. But within their knowledge base, look up Do Not Sell for AdTech Vendors”- it has tips and script you can use to help OneTrust know what happens on those forms.

Side note: Cookie Deletion

Note, right now, when you tell the ECID Opt-in Service to opt a user out of tracking, it does not remove any existing cookies. So in an opt-out situation, where everyone gets cookies to begin with, you may have users that have declined tracking and won’t be getting analytics beacons, but still have Adobe-created-cookies in their browser. Legally, this is a bit of a gray area. Even if it is technically legal (I’ll leave that to the lawyers to confirm), unfortunately the general public cares a lot about appearances. I’ve already seen one instance where Adobe cookies that were set but not even used (the site didn’t fire analytics beacons) caused a lawsuit in Spain, where they were accused of being “one of the most invasive types of cookie for user privacy”. This is complete nonsense, but the authorities and all the lawyers involved may not understand that without a bunch of effort. Even if the lawsuit fails, it has consumed a lot of that company’s resources.

At bare minimum, you should consider adding verbage to your banner or privacy policy that instructs users how to delete cookies on their own. The regulations strongly encourage this.

If you want to delete the AMCV and AMCVS cookies on behalf of the user, it can be a little tricky, since most of the time there is a domain mismatch between the www.example.com site you are on and the “.example.com” domain the AMCV cookies are set at, so you can’t just use _satellite.cookie.remove or somesuch. But you can do something like this to delete them:

_satellite.cookie.set("AMCV_21C9EXAMPLE123450101@AdobeOrg", "delete", {domain:'.example.com', expires: -1})

Note, many plugins also create cookies- you might see s_ppv or s_vnum or any number of other “s_” cookies that are the default names of cookies created by Adobe plugins. Generally, these don’t have “personal information” and in theory shouldn’t have to worry too much about (though I am not a lawyer so please don’t base your decisions off of me), you may want to delete them or at least be aware of them.

Depending on your ECID settings, you may also be setting a demdex cookie. Since this is a third-party cookie (and can effect how users are identified on other sites) it’s even more legally dodgy, and unfortunately even more difficult to delete. You can either stop that cookie from being set to begin with ECID’s disableThirdPartyCookies setting, or be very careful in how you inform your users about it and their ability to opt-out and/or delete it.

Validation

Here is a non-comprehensive list of things to check to confirm you have things set up correctly: obviously, you want to validate that your Analytics, Target, ECID, marketing tags, targeting tags, etc all only fire with user consent. Check both for cookies (in the “Applications” tab if you’re in chrome) and beacons/scripts (in the “Network” tab). Double check that your setup honors the Global Privacy Control signal (I’ve found this easiest to do in Firefox). Check that the user experience isn’t hindered. Be careful to check things that may be using third party technology, like video players- both that they work, and that they comply with consent policies. If you have iframes anywhere on your site, make sure the content within them is also being controlled by your CMP. Make sure you test for each of your Geolocation rules in OneTrust.

Ideally, before you roll out major OneTrust changes, you’d do a full regression test (the type of QA typically done before a major site release, where you make sure none of your pre-existing stuff is impacted). If you are resorting to using Autoblock for anything, a full regression test is a necessity.

Things I’ve found useful for testing:

OneTrust does provide a preview mode, but the most important thing I got out of that is that you can use query parameters (even in production) to change how OneTrust behaves:

?otreset=true&otpreview=false&otgeo=gb

For example, the above combo resets my preferences so I’ll see the banner again (you can also do this by deleting the OptanonAlertBoxClosed cookie.) The handiest part is the otgeo param- I can have Onetrust treat me like I’m in Great Britain (or any other country code I put there) to test that it works as expected in different jurisdictions.

Another useful thing: you can use this in the console to see what Adobe thinks its current permissions are:

adobe.optIn.permissions

I console.logged the heck out of that when figuring out the timing of things.

Tracking Opt-In/Opt-Out Rates

This is a tricky subject: how do you track that someone said they don’t want to be tracked? It may be worth a chat with your lawyers about. It’s important to remember, most regulations are more about having personal information, such as an ID in a cookie (even anonymous IDs), sent to third parties. Cookies are generally needed for keeping track of a session/visitor from page view to page view (or domain to domain, in some cases). If you are only tracking one user action without context, and there is nothing that ties that action to a particular user in any way, then the user has far less to be concerned about when it comes to their privacy. It’s sensitive and definitely worth discussing with your lawyers, but most regulations do allow for the most basic of tracking if there are no IDs used, the data isn’t shared or sold, it’s stored and processed correctly, the user is informed, etc. The data is useless for journey analysis and attribution, but can actually be used to make sure you are respecting user’s privacy properly. But TALK TO LAWYERS before deciding on any such tracking.

OneTrust does have the option to get high-level reporting on consent rates. I would link to the documentation on it but I’ve never gotten a link to Onetrust documentation to work. Instead, I have to click the ? icon and read any documentation within that panel:

A screenshot showing how to access OneTrust's knowledge base

I’ll admit I have not enabled or used their reporting. I’m curious how they get the info they do in cases where the user has consent to zero tracking. I’m assuming that it is free of personal information such as a cookie ID, etc.

We implemented another solution, where for the first 2 weeks after launching OneTrust, we fired hard-coded, identifier-less/cookie-less Adobe Analytics beacons to a Report Suite set up for that purpose, just to get a rough estimate of how it was working. I hope to have a separate blog post about that in the near future.

Adobe Analytics Settings for Privacy

Adobe does offer some admin settings that also help with privacy. You may want to consider these in addition to what you have set up in your TMS:

  • Your General Report Suite Settings include a “Replace the last octet of IP addresses with 0” option and an “IP Obfuscation” option. The first happens before any processing on a hit, meaning the IP never gets stored or processed, and everywhere in Adobe, that user’s true IP is not accessible (including Data Warehouse and Data feeds). Accordingly, it has an impact on your reporting, especially geolocation rules. The IP Obfuscation Option, on the other hand, happens after some processing is done, so it has less impact. You can use it to merely obfuscate, or to remove the IP address altogether.
  • I only just learned of this back-end setting that respects browser privacy settings (presumably, the older Do Not Track option or the newer Global Privacy Control setting). In theory, if your OneTrust/TMS implementation is configured right, nothing with those flags will ever even make it to Adobe, but there’s no harm in a little redundancy, right?

Conclusion

As I said at the beginning, I would love to learn more and improve my approach where possible. The best solution may end up being a crowd-sourced one. Please let me know what has worked or not worked for you!

* Sorry, Adobe. No one is going to convince me to call it “Data Collection Tags”.

** CCPA: I know there are many laws out there beyond California’s Consumer Privacy Act; however, since CCPA tends to be one the most expansive laws ( for now), I tend to use the phrase “CCPA” as an umbrella stand-in term for US laws. It’s much more complicated than that, but I don’t want to open that can of worms every time I need to reference a opt-out-based regulation.

*** If it wasn’t clear, this post was not done in partnership with OneTrust, and I have no formal relationship with them. I’d be happy to talk to them about anything in this post, though. And for what it is worth, of the 5 CMPs I’ve worked with, OneTrust was the least awful, in my experience.

TMS Best Practices: Naming Conventions and Meta Info

How you name your rules, events/triggers, tags and actions can have a big impact on the health of your TMS. You want to prevent duplicated conditions and logic as much as possible, to keep things simple, lighter, and less error-prone. You want to make things easier to find and easier to put into context.

Launch Rules, Events, Conditions, Data Elements, and ACTIONS

Let’s face it, the internal search functionality in Launch isn’t great. But there is much you can do to make navigation within Launch easier and cut down on duplicated logic.

For rule names, I often follow a format with some combination of the following:

category[: sub category] | trigger | [type (analytics or marketing)] | what the rule does/marketing vendor | load order | consent management category

For example:

  • add to basket | “add to basket” event | analytics | s.tl | #50 | C0008
  • all pages | page top | configure EDDL | #10
  • all pages | “page view” event | marketing | verizon | #50 | C0004
  • search: search results | “page view” event | analytics | set vars | #50 | C0008

Of course, it usually differs for every client depending on their needs. For me, the important thing is for rules with similar events/conditions to be together (all my search rules start with “search:”), to know what triggers it (page bottom? direct call rule?), and to have an idea of what’s inside. Here’s a simpler version:

Having it arranged this way already shows me for this property…. I have a lot of rules firing on that page view event. I could probably consolidate some of those into a single rule. I also see some inconsistency… one “page view” is lacking quotes, which makes the editor in me twitch a bit, and in that top one I didn’t specify s.t or s.tl beacon. But you know what? I can navigate this property pretty easily. And if I see an inconsistency, I can fix it as I go along. Some order is better than none.

Sometimes I only include the event order (eg, #50) if it’s something other than the default of 50. Sometimes we have analytics and marketing in the same rules so the standard has to adapt.

For events, I only change the name from the default if I had to customize it- page bottom is always just “Core – Page Bottom” (unless I changed the order, in which case I’d probably name it “Core – Page Bottom #1” or somesuch), but a direct call rule or something based on a CSS selector should always include that info in the name. For instance “click on .pdf links”, “DCR page view #25” or “payment modal enters viewport”. I won’t even be picky about following a standard… just keep it informative. If you changed the order (from #50 to, say, #1), then do note that. It makes troubleshooting so much easier.

Conditions should always have custom names. “Core – Value Comparison” is just not helpful… but “pageType of ‘search results'” is. Again, I’m not picky about following a standard… just make it so I don’t have to click into the condition to have an idea of what it is.

Action naming… this is where I get excited. Folks don’t take advantage of Action names nearly enough. Action names should include the marketing tag name and the scope. Within a rule, it might look redundant with the rule name (how many times do you see “All pages/Page Top” here) :

But if you search for a tag in the Launch’s search tool, those action names make a world of difference. Let’s say I’m searching for eVar63… this:

…is not helpful (by the way, please go upvote this feature request for better search functionality). I’d have to click in to each of those to find out what the context is to know which one I want to make my change to. But if I’ve added a bit of information to the action name, I can know exactly where it is taking me:

It’s a minor inconvenience when setting rules up, but if you have a complex implementation, it can make life so much easier.

For data elements, I tend to go much simpler. Some sort of categorization, then some sort of detail. If it suits the implementation, I might add more information about the source of the data. For example:

  • search: term | QP
  • search: number of results | DL
  • marketing: cmpid
  • content id: page name

I tend to always keep it lower case, since you have to have to right case when referencing a data element.

Don’t stop with good names, add even more info!

As I mentioned in my post on governance, it can be extremely helpful to include information about the tag within the tag itself, along these lines:

TMS Best Practices: Deduplicate scripts and events

UPDATE, April 2023: To my dismay, I’ve learned that my understanding of GTAG was wrong, therefore much of this post is wrong. I still stand by the statement that you should try to remove duplicate code and libraries where possible, but in the case of GTAG… for every “config” you pass, Google will load a new GTAG library for you, adding weight to your site. So, thanks for that, Google.

This is a “low hanging fruit” best practice, but one that most companies could gain from: consolidate tags from the same vendor. Especially if they load an external JavaScript file. For instance, if I’m deploying both an Adwords GTAG and a Doubleclick GTAG, I might paste them both as custom code:

This means that “https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js” file loads twice. It’s a 40 KB file, with no benefit for loading multiple times.

This code accomplishes the same thing, minus 40 KB of dead weight:

You can take it a step further and consolidate events, too- I don’t need to fire a conversion event twice, I can just add multiple destinations to my send_to variable:

This tip isn’t specific to gtag, though that is one of the tags that I see duplicated the most. Anytime you are deploying two tags from the same vendor on a page, odds are there is some part of that code that doesn’t need to be repeated.

TMS Best Practice: Move tags lower on the page

Many tag vendors will tell you in their documentation that a tag must be placed as high as possible. This ensures that that vendor gets credit for every possible conversion, gets every possible data point.

It’s great for their data accuracy, and they may not really care if it has an impact on your page speed. But we do.

You have to find your balance:

  • Do you put the tag as high as possible, knowing it may negatively affect user experience by slowing down the page load?
  • Do you put the tag as low as possible, knowing that if users leave the page quickly, you may never get data about their experience?

Some tags actually DO need to be placed higher. Things that alter the user experience, like Optimization tools, need to have access to the HTML as it is loading. But conversion tags? Are they really worth a potentially slower user experience? It may not matter for one tag here or there, but it adds up!

I don’t think I’ve ever had someone ask me to move the tag up, no matter what the documentation always says. You are the ultimate decision-maker about what tags get deployed, where.

Should I use my TMS’s Extensions to deploy tags, or copy-and-paste as custom code?

This is a question I get asked a lot: should I use my Tag Management System’s Extensions (or Plugins, or Tag Templates, depending on which TMS), or should I just copy-and-paste tags as custom code? The true consultant answer is: it depends.

  • Extensions do have some inherent weight. In GTM, adding a single AdWords conversion event using the Tag Template can add 10-20KB to the weight of my container. Extensions can be heavier than a simple code deployment, but lighter than a messy code deployment.
  • Extensions are less flexible. If you have conditions around your tags, such as “in the US, add these variables to our Doubleclick conversion event, but in the UK, leave those out”, that can be really hard to implement using an extension, but fairly simple in code.
  • Extensions are less likely to cause JS errors. They get load order correct (eg, Launch’s Target extension ensures the Target script has loaded before it add params, which it does before it fires an mbox). They’re more likely to stay updated, which means they’ll work best in current browsers and be more compliant with regulations.

The main thing I want folks to think about is what they’d be willing to give up in order to avoid code. A lot of companies set forth with the goal of having a code-free implementation, thinking that that is the best practice worth achieving. But in many cases, that goal isn’t worth the cost. Vendors/agencies often send their tag requests AS CODE, intended to be copied-and-pasted:

So someone is going to have to interpret that code into the friendly UI of the extension, which does introduce room for error… perhaps more error than merely copying-and-pasting.

I know code can be scary if you don’t have a lot of technical resources working on your implementation. Do what you think you can sustain. But don’t assume that code-free is the ideal you must fight to achieve.

Server-side Tag Management: Setting Appropriate Expectations

My first few posts in this series have established why marTech Ecosystem health matters, and shown some ways to measure the impact marTech is having on your site. One way to reduce some of that impact is to move some tags serverside.

As a brief primer for those still learning about Server-Side Tag Management: currently, most of us deploy a “client-side” tag manager (which means it runs within the user’s browser). The client-side TMS uses JavaScript to gather information from the page about the user’s journey, then send that information along to third parties in the form of pixels, iframes, and scripts.

A server-side TMS still has that client-side component- it still needs to gather information in the user’s browser. But instead of sending that information to third parties using scripts, pixels and iframes, it sends all the info in one big batch to a server, where you can then divvy it up and send to third parties using APIs.

This is a wonderful technology that will be used more and more in the future. Tealium has long had a server-side option, and now Google has GTM Server-Side and Adobe has Event Forwarding. But server-side tag management does have some limitations:

  1. This technology is fairly new. It can be hard to find documentation and expertise. And frankly, some of the tools still feel a little “beta”.
  2. Not all tags have a server-side option. Facebook is pushing it really hard with their Conversions API, but Bing doesn’t even have a way to send data through APIs yet. In my example image above, you can see that Bing has had to stay client-side while other tags moved out.
    Some tags will always need a client-side component: anything that changes the user experience needs access TO that experience as it loads. So scripts for optimization, personalization, recommendations, voice of customer… they may always need to have some part of it maintained on the client-side. Maintaining a server-side container and a client-side container does complicate things, but for now it’s the only way forward for most folks.
  3. The client-side component of server-side tracking still needs a way to identify the user as they move from page to page, and for the foreseeable future this will be done using cookies. GTM Server-Side can actually help a little with this, as you can use it to deploy HTTPS cookies that will make browsers like Safari happier. It can do this because you run the container on your own server, which does have a cost, but it also allows you to do first-party things. Adobe (and Tealium, as far as I can gather) host the server-side container themselves, which is less complicated for you to set up, but makes it so they can’t really help with the whole make-happier-cookies thing (though they certainly don’t hurt either).
  4. Server-side tag management still requires governance. Just because it doesn’t cause JS errors and doesn’t slow down your site doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter who you share your user’s data with. Server-side tracking is still subject to privacy regulations. GDPR and CCPA don’t care if you use JavaScript or APIs to share your user’s data, it just cares that you are sharing that data.

I’m not saying folks shouldn’t move part of their implementation server-side- I’m actually very excited to see this technology roll out more. We just need to approach it realistically and be as well-informed as possible before making decisions about it.

Governing your tags going forward

My first few posts in this series have established why marTech Ecosystem health matters, and shown some ways to measure the impact marTech is having on your site. Now, let’s talk about how to do a deeper audit of the tags on your site so you can start to plan a way forward.

Regardless of how much effort you can put into cleaning up current tags on your site, there are relatively simple things you can do, starting now, that will improve the future health of your marTech implementation.

Keep information ABOUT the tag WITHIN the tag

Within each tag, include info about the tag:

  • Who requested the tag (include any contact info for the agency, vendor support, internal sponsor)
  • The date the tag was deployed or updated or confirmed to be in use (and if known, date to remove)
  • Who deployed the tag

I like to do this directly in the JavaScript, but you can also include at least some of that info in the Rule, Tag or Action name, or you can use the TMS “Notes” functionality (both GTM and Adobe Launch have it)- just be aware that not everyone is good at looking at notes (they can be a bit sneaky) and they don’t show up in a lot of auditing tools and such.

However you do it, keeping this information directly with the tag makes it so easy for everyone to have context around the tag and makes it easy to keep your TMS set up healthy and current.

Use a Tag Request Intake Process

We’ve helped a lot of our clients implement a formal MarTech Tracking Request Intake process. When someone comes to you asking for a new tag to be deployed, you can have them fill out key information such as contact info, go-live date, tag vendor/account ID… This information can help in a few ways:

  • It cuts down on the back-and-forth between the implementor and the tag requester (I’ve had some email threads go 20 replies deep, trying to make sure we were all on the same page about the tag. You’d be amazed how often I get Facebook tags without an account ID, for example.)
  • It gives you a chance to set expectations with the tag requester, like the fact you need 2 weeks of turnaround time, or that you’ll follow up with them on a certain date to see if the tag is still in use or needs updates.
  • It builds an audit trail and can feed directly into documentation, like for the Tag Inventory you should be keeping.

I have an example in my my governance workbook download, but it doesn’t have to be a spreadsheet. It can be a google form, a JIRA template, or just a something you paste into an email.

Keep a “pixel menu”

I’ve found it can be a huge help to have a standard list of what user actions you usually have tags on, and what dimensions are available at those times.

At bare minimum, this can be a great internal resource for the implementors and, say, a Center of Excellence. Sometimes it can be helpful to show vendors/agencies to get on the same page about what’s worth tracking…. just be warned, sometimes if an agency sees such a list, they’ll just say they want all of it. Which brings me to my next suggestion:

Consider having some restrictions on what you deploy

It’s ok to push back on Tag Requests. Consider:

  • Do you only deploy certain types of tags? Maybe things that you already have a set up for, or that have passed a security review.
  • Do you only deploy on certain user actions (do they have to “stick to your list” in the pixel menu)? If they ask for a tag on both the click of the search button and the load of the search results page, ask them WHY. Sometimes they’ll have a reason, but much of the time they’ll say that the button click was just a nice-to-have, and they’ll tell you what items are actually a priority. Pro tip: mention to them “our turnaround time can be pretty quick if we stick to these particular user actions, but if you need something custom, that might slow things down. Maybe we can move forward with the priority tags for now, and circle back to your more custom requirements later?”
  • Do you ask them to justify the business value of the added weight and complexity that their tag brings? Some of the most complicated tags I’ve deployed turned out to be for something not providing a lot of value. Much of the time, the data a tag is supposed to be delivering can already be found other ways (like with an analytics tool).

Establish a follow-up cadence

Set up a calendar for your TMS. Each time you publish a tag, add a reminder one year out to followup:

It takes very little effort or commitment in the here-and-now, and makes it easy to followup without it being part of a massive clean up effort.

Just… do something

Don’t wait until you can get it perfect. Do what you can, when you can. Make a commitment for the little things you can do going forward that your future self will thank you for.

Auditing your marTech tags and TMS

My first few posts in this series have established why marTech Ecosystem health matters, and shown some ways to measure the impact marTech is having on your site. Now, let’s talk about how to do a deeper audit of the tags on your site so you can start to plan a way forward.

Keep a Tag Inventory

I have a template as part of my governance workbook download, but it’s not hard to get started on your own: create a spreadsheet with one row per tag/vendor account, with columns for at least the following:

  • Vendor (Facebook, Doubleclick, etc)
  • Account Number- your key to the audit*
  • Date of last update to tag
  • Internal Owner/Agency Contact Info
  • Next Steps (investigate, keep, remove)

*That account number can become a useful tool for finding more information about the tag. If I look in my email box for the word “Adwords”, the results would be hard to wade through. But If I search for my Adwords account number, “AW-123456”, it will take me directly to correspondence about that tag. This also helps when using your TMS’s internal search functionality, or to use as a filter in the network tab:

It’s ok if this sheet is a work in progress- in fact, I guarantee it almost always will be. It’s ok if the sheet only has information in three rows, or just has the first two columns filled out. It is better to have a blank workbook so you can at least have a place to store info as it becomes available, or to add new tags to, than to have nothing at all. Just fill in what you can, when you can.

Use Tools Like Observepoint

Observepoint has a free chrome extension that you can run to see which known marTech tags are on any page you access:

It will automatically map domains to known vendors and show you account numbers where applicable (again, you can see how those account numbers are handy for tying information together). Since this tool works on a page-by-page basis, I recommend running it on your home page and any key conversion points, like a purchase confirmation page, because most of your tags are likely to be represented there.

If you want a more comprehensive scan of your site, the paid Observepoint App does just that- it crawls your site and gives you a full report of everything it finds. You may need to teach it how to get to parts of the site that require interactions (like logging in, or entering credit card information) but with Observepoint, the more time you can invest in it up front, the more value you will get out of the tool.

The nice thing about the paid app is it has an under-appreciated “Tag Initiators” tool that shows you which tags are loading other tags, which is invaluable for helping figure out where your less-obvious tags are coming from.

A quick note: Observepoint may not recognize and catch some of the more obscure tags- I did come across a few that the extension didn’t pick up (though I have no doubts they have a drastically more comprehensive list than I do). I don’t think this is a shortcoming of theirs, but just the nature of the beast: there are almost 10,000 marTech vendors now, and many of them use multiple domains for tracking. But just in case, you may still want to run the webpagetest.org domains report and analysis I talked about in my post on marTech impact, and may need to supplement their mapping with information from our vendor/domain mapping database, or you may have to do some research on your own. I’ve found better.fyi to be a great resource for this type of research.

Use TMS Container Export tools

There are free tools for both Adobe Launch and GTM to help you see all your different tags (and help you get a sense of the health of your TMS set up).

For Adobe Launch, Tagtician by Jim Gordon is still one of the handiest things out there. It’s a chrome extension you can use to download an entire Launch library- toggle the library option at the top:

Then click “export”:
This will give you a spreadsheet with information on every rule, data element, and extension in your Launch environment:
I tend to move the “extensions” and “data elements” info to their own tabs, then add some columns to the rules data:
  • Tag Vendor
  • Vendor ID
  • Event
  • Potential Last Date Updated (or Date Implemented)
  • Notes

I turn it into a table and organize by Extension, add columns for Vendor, Account Id, event (What the tag does), date of last update, notes, etc… and then just start at the top and work my way down:

Sometimes, the tag is directly in the exported file in “action detail”, but much of the time custom code resides in external JS files and frankly, I haven’t found an easier way to get at the code than to just open Launch and go looking for it.

Urs Boller also has a great tool for Launch: the Launch Parser. It makes it easy to see the relationships between the different components (what data element is getting used where, etc) and also helps spot problems and make recommendations.

For GTM, Simo Ahava has a great tool for showing all the different components (tags, triggers, variables, containers) and their relationships to each other. Then if you want to dive deeper, you can export your container directly from the GTM Admin console:

This spits out a JSON file that can be a bit intimidating, but you can paste it into a tool like json2table.com to turn it into a much more manageable spreadsheet.

Do what you can

I know an audit sounds like a lot of work. At the bare minimum, set up that Tag Inventory and just start documenting things going forward, then audit past stuff when you can. I recommend just taking on one vendor at a time (eg, all your Facebook tags at once). Apply a new naming convention/meta data standard as you go to keep track of what you’ve updated/inventoried and what you haven’t.

It’s better to have something in place, even if it’s imperfect.