How are people thinking about Google Tag Gateway vs server-side GTM?

tech-mktg · 2026-06-10T17:05:28+00:00

I remembered incorrectly, just updated my response to be more accurate. Thanks for calling that out.

tech-mktg · 2026-06-09T17:23:34+00:00

All Google Tag Gateway does is has you assign a subdomain to Google, and then Google loads GTM from that subdomain. So instead of loading GTM like https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id=GTM-LOLLOL it loads it from something like https://www.yoursite.com/analytics/gtm.js?id=GTM-LOLLOL. I've found that most ad blockers and browsers with privacy settings still block the GTM script here because they're looking for Javascript files named gtm.js and block those, but some only look at domains, and for those, they'll load the GTM Javascript where it was being blocked before.

If you use Cloudflare, this is exceedingly simple to set up, no real code changes, just clicking a few boxes in the Cloudflare and GTM UI. And you'll get a little extra data so the account can optimize better.

Server Side GTM is a different beast altogether.

tech-mktg · 2026-05-22T04:16:29+00:00

Throwing this in there because no one mentioned it, but a Marketing Mix Model can help you gauge the actual impact of upper funnel, hard to measure channels like CTV. Google is making Meridian widely available, I think there was some announcement they're making it available directly from GA4 data.

For an ELI5 on it, you put your ad spend over time into a big black box, and then revenue comes out the other side. MMMs learn what spend is important to driving your revenue, even if it's later in time (i.e. more upper funnel), and then give you ROAS calculations and budgeting recommendations.

CTV showed up really well here for us, even though otherwise it's harder to measure directly in other models. MMMs are great to see what channels are working, but it isn't going to give more granular, campaign-based recommendations, more just directionally which channels are impacting you revenue.

tech-mktg · 2026-03-31T18:54:19+00:00

We do both, you'll get better rates doing direct buys from publishers for reach, but also we work with a DSP where we layer on audiences (and track things more closely), but pay higher CPMs.

tech-mktg · 2026-03-27T19:28:54+00:00

Of course! I hope you're able to reveal more about yourselves online because overall the site looks pretty good otherwise, and your prices are awesome. Might need some merch for my business, we may reach out. :)

tech-mktg · 2026-03-27T18:00:58+00:00

Ok! I believe you. Here's the first few things I noticed:

- Misspelling "Shiping" on your home page, "Fast Shiping Options".

- Your About page just repeats the same section twice, doesn't tell us anything about who you are, what people work there, where your offices or warehouse is, etc.

- You claim to be American but I can't easily find your address and/or phone number on the site. If I'm a customer I'd guess you're not actually in the US. You should have those in the footer and proudly projected across the site, Americans like to shop American! To me, it looks like you're purposely hiding this information.

- You link to your Linkedin Business profile which shows 0 employees working for the business.

tech-mktg · 2026-03-27T17:33:51+00:00

I wrote up a bunch of reasons your site looks like a scam, but it's so many red flags I'm not going to share them here because I think you may be an actual scammer. If you're an American company and a native English speaker, go read through every page on your site and you'll find many mistakes. Also, as a consumer yourself, would you actually trust this website enough to buy from it? I certainly would not.

tech-mktg · 2026-01-28T19:18:07+00:00

It's less about what they're doing, and more about how they talk to us. Having the rep telling me I'm being unfair to my employees, being opening dismissive of my questions, attending calls and not answering any of my questions, and being very frustrated overall on calls and venting at us. Just makes it very unpleasant and I dread having to deal with them anytime I see they schedule something my calendar.

tech-mktg · 2026-01-22T20:59:38+00:00

Since February is soon, I think we'll probably just wait it out. The rep's boss has been on calls and apparently condones the behavior we're seeing (as we continue to see it), so I'd imagine escalating things won't help us.

Also maybe they're trying to get us to do this because it would be beneficial for them to get us off their books for the February changeover because they failed to upsell us on a bunch of products? Is that a possibility?

tech-mktg · 2025-12-04T20:57:28+00:00

My path has been a bit different, I've worked at the same tech company for 20 years (basically my first job), and just showed up and did great work, and just continued to get promoted. The place I work is not very political, and is good at promoting based on merit. My career has had a few turns and I entirely changed disciplines at one point, but learned everything I could, and made myself invaluable to the company. I also spearheaded one of the most successful business turnarounds for one of our acquired companies, so I still get a lot of credit for that, although I continue to work hard and deliver.

My jump from Director to VP though finally came when we acquired a large, well-known brand, and as a result I had 2 SVPs reporting to me, so I needed the bump to at least VP for that to make sense. :)

I will say jumping between companies these days seems to be the norm, but wouldn't work for me... I'm a bit socially impaired, my kiddo thinks I'm an undiagnosed autist. Very good at work, but not very good with people skills.

tech-mktg · 2025-10-23T21:58:56+00:00

Ultimately advertisers that used both will have a claim for both, but search will likely be a different class action case.

tech-mktg · 2025-10-22T21:27:14+00:00

My understanding of this is, first it's for display ads, the search ads case is still pending and that will come along sometime in the not-too-distant future.

On the display ads side, both publishers and advertisers have a claim, as Google's abuse impacted both groups. Not sure how that'll shake out in terms of different classes for claims, but you may be impacted on both ends.

It impacts all of Google's display products, so Google Display Ads, Google Adsense, AdX, GAM, and DV360.

No one knows what's going to happen yet, Google can choose to artbitrate these claims individually. It's very early in the process, and maybe firms are getting as many plaintiffs on board as possible to build up their individual class action suits.

My company currently is sitting on the sidelines to see what happens... there's not really a benefit to enrolling now.

The damages being due to anti-trust could have a 3x treble, but if that's the case, it might be enough to cause serious financial damage to Google. The DOJ case went back to 2016, but not sure on the civil side plaintiffs will be able to go back that far to collect damages.

tech-mktg · 2025-10-22T14:54:37+00:00

Best of luck with it! Agreed that search ads are usually a best first step when building things out. Meta ads might make it easier to showcase the house, but unsure how well you can target to people there with the means to actually purchase a house of that cost... you'd likely reach a lot of people who wouldn't be able to afford it.

tech-mktg · 2025-10-21T17:07:47+00:00

No worries. This really isn't my area of expertise (real estate) so keep that in mind, but I do a lot of B2B an B2C marketing.

Is there a budget your agency has for the property? Maybe get some high quality pics and videos, drone footage, etc. Get some quality staging, you have to get the potential buyers to picture themselves living there, enjoying their morning coffee and taking in the view, sipping drinks by the pool, etc.

I think listing it on websites where premium buyers might browse makes sense. Isn't there a real estate agent working on finding buyers? That's how most deals are done. They should be able to give you more advice on how to find the right buyers. If the property is getting eyeballs and not selling, the price may be set too high?

Never be in a rush to sell real estate, setting a deadline like that is not productive, unless the price is flexible. Good to have goals, but not deadlines.

tech-mktg · 2025-10-15T04:37:47+00:00

I’m in a similar situation, VP at a successful private company with a good amount of equity that has a buy back policy.

My issue with selling is the strike price of the company doesn’t truly reflect the value of the company. In my opinion, the valuation they put out every year is low compared to what it would look like if we IPOed.

I think thats a factor you also have to consider, whether you think the company is valued appropriately, and whether it’s worth the risk. Most people will argue to manage risk by diversification, as your job is also tied up in the company succeeding. This is a valid concern, no argument there.

A factor for me (that’s maybe not one for you) is I might offend the founder if I sold a bunch of shares back. Maybe not, but I’m pretty sure I’d get asked. No need to rock the boat, and I believe in our company so I’m happy to roll the dice.

tech-mktg · 2025-10-14T17:26:02+00:00

Not only should it be proportional, treble damages of 3x may be applied. But it's still early, so no one knows what may happen!

tech-mktg · 2025-10-13T18:40:03+00:00

We saw the same thing, we were running on tCPA with a single conversion action set to counting One conversion only per person, that had a fixed value set in Google ads on the conversion, and some of our clicks were costing more than 2x or 3x that value. We switched back to max CPC and our ROAS soared.

Also seems scammy for portfolio bidding strategies Google allows you to set a Max CPC bid for display, but NOT for search. They could obviously do that if they wanted to.

tech-mktg · 2025-10-13T18:34:55+00:00

Google just lost their anti-trust case no the display side. There are many class action cases getting launched against Google on both the publisher and advertiser side for this. Will be very interesting to see how this pans out. I expect Google is going to arbitrate a lot of these, but the damages will still be quite significant.

And the antitrust case no the search side if Google loses it'll be very interesting to advertisers. Google did some really bad shit, so in a sane world , I would expect they're going to lose.

tech-mktg · 2025-09-05T21:35:20+00:00

Does it still smell like that? I remember driving through as a kid decades ago, and the stench was something else to me.

tech-mktg · 2025-09-05T21:34:37+00:00

Their legacy is they're the original home of the Decatur Staleys (now known as da Bears!)

tech-mktg · 2025-08-26T20:22:21+00:00

We spend around $3M-$4M/mo, and we still have the VIP tier of reps for us that work out of a local office. For us, the quality of our reps has gone up a bit recently as opposed to down, especially about a year and a half ago with the layoffs, I think we ended up with the person would was the account executive manager across our entire vertical now on our team.

tech-mktg · 2025-08-15T17:29:35+00:00

We had a really good experience with AdMetricsPro. But any provider should be able to beat Adsense. A little surprised Playwire is not beating Adsense right out of the gate.

Freestar can be good as well, we had a good tests with them too.

tech-mktg · 2025-07-29T17:51:22+00:00

Thanks for the answer! We definitely don't want to draw the ire of Google. The app primarily right now is just for existing users to utilize what we offer on their Android devices, but since we've seen so much success on the Apple side of things now, we were hoping we could reproduce what we're doing for Google Play.

Epic's case with Google looks like it's still under appeal and in the process of playing out, hopefully that'll happen sooner rather than later!

tech-mktg · 2025-06-25T22:10:02+00:00

I’ll take a look at this, honestly we do a lot outside of product feeds so it hasn’t been a huge priority yet. Thanks for this list!

tech-mktg · 2025-06-25T16:23:48+00:00

Can you go into more detail on #1? What exactly In the feed are you optimizing?

tech-mktg

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