Category Archives: Implementation

The Modern Digital Analytics Existential Crisis

This article title isn’t clickbait but instead a thought exercise. It’s something I’ve been trying to mentally reconcile for quite a while without much direction. In fact, I started mulling over this right around the time I posted about bot traffic. Our industry will never go away. There will always be jobs… so why is… Read More »

Data Layers and Server-Side Tag Management

There is a lot going on in analytics right now – much of it catalyzed by browser privacy changes. These changes can be scary! We’re now in a world that’s considering server-side tracking. As a front-end guy, that’s super intimidating. I have about 10 blog posts that are half-written. One talks about the state of… Read More »

The Adobe Client Data Layer (ACDL)

It’s been a while since I started writing about the Event-Driven Data Layer (EDDL). Since then, I’ve had a lot of really incredible discussions with practitioners around its usage and best practices. The general consensus has been that the W3C is outdated and that the EDDL is the future. Now admittedly, it’s also the past.… Read More »

Dream Team: EDDL and HTML5 Data Attributes

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 »

Adobe Launch Property Inheritance

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 »

Top Event-Driven Data Layer Mistakes

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 »

The Semantic Implementation

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 »

Event-Driven Data Layer (EDDL) Demo

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 »