Jim Gordon 
Over a year ago (after the 2019 Adobe Summit) I offered to chat with anyone on the phone about data layers (that offer still stands, by the way). One such conversation was with my friend Yehoshua Coren, who you may know better as Analytics Ninja. He spent a good chunk of the call trying to … Read more
There are a lot of companies out there who operate many sites using a similar framework (or template). One good example is from my favorite airline Delta, who owns Virgin Atlantic. You can see both of these websites run on the same template. From an implementation standpoint, I want rules I create on Delta to … Read more
After implementing dozens of Event-Driven Data Layers (EDDLs), I want to share some of my experiences. I want to be clear that while a data layer is critically important to a sustainable implementation, it doesn’t just fix everything. Like any development initiative, a data layer can even create frustration. I’m not going to talk about … Read more
Before I dive into this – I just want to say that I hope all of you and your family are staying safe. This post isn’t intended to ignore the suffering that’s going on. Among everything else in this world, people are what’s important. We’re fortunate enough to work in an industry that allows flexibility … Read more
As implementation specialists, we need to think like product-builders. Our product is the implementation. This product has 2 end-users: stakeholders who use reports and teammates who help maintain the implementation. To get the most out of this article, we have to agree that reliable data is good and that you don’t want to spend your … Read more
I’ve thought a lot about Adobe Launch naming conventions over the past year or two. I’ve always been very principled: name your rules after the action and keep your Data Elements semantic. That was how it was intended with Satellite (pre-Adobe DTM)… and architecturally, things haven’t changed that much. You still have Rules and Data … Read more
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Since posting about the EDDL (Event-Driven Data Layer), I’ve gotten a lot of questions about how this works. If you’re a user of Google Tag Manager, you’re likely already familiar. For everyone else, this concept might be a little foreign. For instance, on the surface it doesn’t seem as readable as the W3C. I want … Read more
We’ve talked about how relying on CSS Selectors is unsustainable. We’ve reviewed the most efficient and sustainable way to implement a data layer. It’s worth taking a step back to review why one would implement a data layer in the first place. So many organizations don’t have one and it’s incredibly difficult to scale this. … Read more
This week I dove into the SDI Toolkit by Search Discovery. If you recall, I already reviewed the lookup table. The extension has since been updated to v1.0.4. We’ll look at the other features included in this utility. While there isn’t configuration necessary in this extension, there is a tutorial baked into the configuration screen. … Read more