Tealium co-founder Ali Behnam tells me their San Diego startup began three years ago as an IT consulting firm, and soon ran into a lot of clients who needed their help to address a variety of headaches associated with managing all the page tags on a company website. The tracking code that makes up these tags is part of the HTML markup at the top of a Web page, and typically connects the page with outside services, such as Web analytics.
Instead of just providing the heavy lifting that companies needed to manage all their JavaScript-based tags separately, Behnam says, “We came up with a concept to create a single tag, and then managing all their tools and vendors using that same tag.” They refined their product over time, and today Tealium is announcing the public debut of its universal tag management system, Tealium iQ.
The self-service system enables Tealium’s customers to test, manage, and deploy various digital marketing campaigns, using a simple drag-and-drop interface on a Web console. The company says its Web-based approach enables marketers to manage their own campaigns, with no knowledge of JavaScript, and so lifts the burden of tag management and marketing demands on a company’s IT personnel.
As Tealium’s Behnam defines it, a tag is a piece of tracking code that’s added to a web page. Once a Web page has loaded, the tag executes a command that allows the tracking of the page by a digital marketing vendor.
Tealium estimates that 90 percent of Web analytics companies and other digital marketing providers use some type of JavaScript-based tag that needs to be implemented on a client’s website. Such tags are used to optimize company websites for search engines, to collect and measure data for Web analytics, and to carry out online surveys, retargeting campaigns, behavioral targeting, and other online marketing functions.
Tealium says most enterprise-class websites (operated by corporations, government agencies, and other large organizations) are carrying between 20 and 30 vendor tags on their Web pages. This often messy and disorganized assortment can include
