Integration of third-party tags

You can use the etracker tag manager to send data to etracker analytics as well as trigger tags from Google, Meta etc.. The special advantage here is that triggering is automatically linked to the etracker consent manager and therefore only takes place with the appropriate consent. This means that you only have to maintain third-party tags in one place. You can also access all data collected in etracker analytics for third-party tags. This makes management very simple, efficient and avoids errors.

The etracker tag manager can also be used in combination with external consent management solutions. The link is made via special variables and triggers and must be taken into account each time third-party tags are configured.

Prerequisites

• To display standard third-party tags, you need at least an etracker analytics Pro or Enterprise Edition.
• To display custom third-party tags (custom code), you need an etracker analytics Enterprise Edition.

Optionally, only the tag and consent manager modules can be upgraded to the Pro or Enterprise level.

Standard and user-defined tags

Tags from Google, Microsoft Ads, Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn Ads, Pinterest, Outbrain, and OpenAI are preconfigured by default. You can select the individual tags associated with each by clicking on the corresponding entry.

Server-Side Conversion Uploads
In addition to the option of sending conversions to the advertising platform on a daily basis, some providers also offer server-side conversion uploads. The specific options available vary by provider.

Google Ads, Microsoft Ads	We recommend using the server-side conversion upload (GA, MS), which does not require consent, instead of the conversion tag, which does require consent, since the former generally provides more data. It is not possible to deduplicate duplicate conversions when both methods are used simultaneously. The ad platform can only distinguish between primary and secondary sources, in which case only the conversions from the primary source are used for campaign management.
Meta, TikTok Ads, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and OpenAI	Using tags is also useful when employing server-side conversion uploads, since the data is automatically deduplicated when the same conversion events are used.
Outbrain	A server-side conversion upload is not possible.

Enhanced Conversions
To optimize the measurement accuracy of your Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, Meta, TikTok, Pinterest, and OpenAI tags despite the increasing restrictions on traditional cookie and URL parameter tracking, etracker supports the use of Enhanced Conversions. To do this, please use the “User-provided data” variable.

Custom Tags
You can integrate any custom code using the “<” / “> Custom” option. With custom tags, you can choose between displaying them globally on all pages or triggering them selectively.

Configure tags

After selecting the tag type, you can configure all the necessary and optional settings for the tag. This always includes a custom title and, optionally, a description.

Typically, each tag includes one or more triggers that determine when the tag should be fired. However, there are also tags that are always meant to be fired. Therefore, the basic tags provided by advertising platforms do not include trigger associations.

Variables can be used to optionally include dynamic contents.

The assignment to a consent category and the respective provider is also part of the tag configuration. This information can be used to control consent management and display the appropriate information in the detailed view of the consent dialog.

The following figure shows the tag configuration using a Google Ads conversion tag as an example:

Once the configuration is complete, the tag can be published directly or saved as a draft. Both the live tag and tag drafts can be tested via the debug mode.

Checking using debug mode is always recommended to avoid errors from the outset.

Created tags can be edited again at any time or used as an aid when creating further tags using the copy function. Changes are automatically documented in the change history.

This gives you secure control of all third-party tags and a perfectly integrated solution for analytics, consent and tag management.

Linking with external content tools

Procedure for linking to an external Consent Management Platform (CMP):

1. Create variable
   
   Create a variable in the etracker tag manager that contains the user’s consent status. Depending on the CMP used, this can be a value from a dataLayer event or an entry in the session storage or local storage, for example.
   
2. Create trigger
   
   Define a trigger in the etracker tag manager that uses a regular expression (RegEx) to check whether the value of the variable from step 1 contains consent for the desired category.
   
3. Define trigger group
   
   Create a trigger group in the etracker tag manager as a trigger for the desired tag. The trigger group consists of
   • the trigger defined in step 2 (consent available), and
   • one or more additional triggers that should trigger the desired tag under the intended conditions (e.g. user-defined events or URLs).