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.