The digital realm is a fast-paced, evolving landscape. Significant contributors to this evolution include third-party utilities, Tag Management Systems (TMS), and Customer Data Platforms (CDP), which have fundamentally altered our approach to web analytics. Amid this ongoing transformation, one groundbreaking solution emerges - Zaraz, a server-side tag manager that operates at the edge and is redefining the web analytics domain.
In this blog post, we'll cover:
In the realm of marketing automation and analytics, third-party utilities such as Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel have secured a substantial foothold. These tools employ 'tags', or code fragments, embedded within each webpage. Especially prevalent on traditional server-rendered pages, these tags facilitate a range of tracking and monitoring functions.
However, as technology advanced, managing the escalating volume of tags on web pages became a significant challenge. This situation was particularly evident around 2010 when tech teams started wrestling with the bottleneck created by multiplying tags. This situation led to the advent of Tag Management Systems (TMS), which empowered marketing teams to independently inject tags, scripts, and more into their web pages, thereby promoting efficiency and agility.
Stepping into the limelight was Segment, a venture backed by Y Combinator, which caused a seismic shift in the industry by creating Analytics JS, a unified API consolidating event collection procedures from esteemed analytics tools like JTrack, Facebook Track, and Mixpanel Track. This innovation marked the advent of Customer Data Platforms (CDPs), the subsequent phase in tag management software evolution. CDPs allowed organizations to derive actionable intelligence from their data.
Zaraz is a server-side tag manager, running on the edge, that allows users to manage their tags and track user data in real-time. Another Y Combinator success, it was acquired by Cloudflare, an internet company that provides CDN, cybersecurity, and DDoS mitigation services, and is now part of Cloudflare's suite of products. Zaraz offers a resilient, adaptable TMS that features the developer experience of CDPs and aligns with Data Protection Authorities (DPAs). This tool provides a streamlined tag management process and can integrate with any third party tools without significantly affecting page speed. Zaraz sets itself apart with its state-of-the-art computing capabilities. It blends the best features of TMS and CDP, offering users the ease of a dashboard and a unified API for an elevated Developer Experience (DX).
Zaraz sets itself apart with its state-of-the-art computing capabilities on top of providing a streamlined tag management process. Zaraz allows you to control what the scripts you insert on your page do, ensuring they don't have access to anything they aren't authorized to see. This way, even if a third-party script provider is compromised, it won't result in a security incident.
A standout feature of Zaraz is its integration with Cloudflare's Workers Platform, offering a Data Localization Suite that aids clients in maintaining GDPR compliance. This feature enables clients to choose specific regions to run their software and ensures no superfluous data logging occurs.
Key aspects that set Zaraz apart:
An intriguing statistic shows that 94% of global mobile pages host at least one third-party utility. Larger websites average around 43 tools. This heavy reliance on third-party tools can cause significant performance lags, particularly on mobile devices. Considering the substantial influence of page speed on SEO ranking and conversion rates, internet companies are now prioritizing Core Web Vitals, especially those focusing on consumers like e-commerce, publishers, and direct-to-consumer websites.