Understanding Google Tag Manager through the data on usage and impact

In today’s fast-paced and ever-growing digital world, it is now more important than ever to accurately and consistently track your site’s performance to make sure you are optimising your marketing efforts. The better able you are to make confident, data-driven strategy decisions, the more likely you are to drive the results you want and need. This is why tracking tools, like Google Tag Manager (GTM), are crucial in the marketing world.

Ultimately GTM is a centralised tool where users can create, implement, manage and edit tags without having to directly interfer with your site’s code or hiring a developer.

In this blog, I will break down some key stats to help give you an idea of how popular Google Tag Manager is within the tracking industry. I have also provided information on what GTM is, the benefits it offers businesses, and competitors, the challenges of using GTM and the future of GTM. With so much to get through, we better get started. Let’s go.

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Stats about Google Tag Manager: Usage and impact

• Google Tag Manager is currently used by 48.1% of all websites
• 10 major websites (including Google, YouTube, Netflix, Spotify and Samsung) utilise Google Tag Manager.
• 5% of Google Tag Manager users are from the retail sector.
• As of January 2025, Google Tag Manager has a market share of around 95% in the tag management industry.
• Of all the current customers using Google Tag Manager, just over 70% of Google Tag Manager users are from small businesses (those with fewer than 50 employees)
• 34% of Google Tag Manager users are based in the United States, and 7% are in the United Kingdom.
• On top marketing websites, the average number of tracking tags is 12.
• Using Google Tag Manager incorrectly can affect page speed, load times, ranking issues and overall site performance.
• It’s essential to ensure that tags fire on 100% of intended pages and events for accurate data collection.
• Every Google Tag Manager account can have up to 500 containers and the maximum size of each container is 200KB.
• Google Tag Manager enables the collection of additional data such as scroll depth and form submissions, improving tracking accuracy.
• The consent mode in Google Tag Manager can impact conversion rates by up to 30% due to the reliance on user consent for cookie tracking.
• 100% of Google Tag Manager users can test their tags before going live using the built-in sandbox feature.
• Google Tag Manager has version control, allowing users to track up to 50 previous versions of their tag containers.
• Google Tag Manager allows for role-based access control, enabling teams of up to 5 different roles (admins, users, etc.) per container.
• Google Tag Manager maintains an audit trail, tracking up to around 100 changes made to tags and settings.
• Over 4 million companies use Google Tag Manager
• Of all the customers that are using Google Tag Manager, a majority (71%) are small (<50 employees), 9% are large (>1000 employees) and 20% are medium-sized.
• Of all the customers that are using Google Tag Manager, a majority (74%) are small (<$50M), 6% are large (>$1000M) and 13% are medium-sized.

Back to basics: What is Google Tag Manager?

Key features of Google Tag Manager

For anyone unaware of what Google Tag Manager is and what it does, let’s break it down.

GTM is a free digital marketing tool that helps users track, manage and monitor marketing ‘tags’ on their website without having to make changes to their site’s code directly. Tags are short sections of code that are used by marketers to track user behaviour and collect a range of data. For example, if you wanted to measure if someone clicks a certain CTA button on your page, you would use a tag.

Normally developers would have to write code directly into a site to be able to add a tag or tracking system but GTM allows anyone to add, change or remove tags without actually altering the site’s code. GTM is the tool that users can use to manage, implement and track these tags, ultimately increasing efficiency and accuracy when it comes to performance tracking and analysis.

Because GTM allows marketers to implement tracking codes for different platforms (e.g. social media, Google Ads, CRM systems and more), users can test campaigns in real-time and adjust strategies accordingly. The more control and flexibility marketers have over campaigns the better able they are to adapt and shift strategy when needed to drive results.

Here are some key benefits of using GTM in marketing:

• No coders or developers are needed. Users can make changes to tags and use the tool effectively without previous coding knowledge.
• Because GTM provides a simple way to manage tags all in one place, marketers can update/implement and track tags efficiently.
• GTM helps to reduce excess code and optimises site loading times.
• GTM allows for real-time testing so users can preview changes before they are made live.

Let’s dive into these benefits a little more.

Why is Google Tag Manager so important for marketers?

Ultimately GTM helps marketers save time and simplify marketing efforts to drive better performance. Below I have broken down some of the key reasons GTM has become a staple tool for many digital marketers:

1. GTM increases efficiency

Ever heard of the phrase ‘work smarter not harder’, well GTM is a tool that helps people do just that. Needing a developer to come and update your site every time you want to add, change or remove a tracking tool is extremely time-consuming and can delay campaigns.

Therefore, GTM saves marketers time because they can manage the tags themselves (even if they don’t know much about code!). GTM’s user-friendly interface makes the process easy for marketers and helps to ensure that campaigns are consistently optimised.

By taking the workload off developers, they can spend more quality time on their workload and complex technical issues, whilst marketers can crack on knowing they are in control and gathering accurate data using GTM. Therefore, the tool also helps streamline workloads which can improve productivity and efficiency within a team.

2. Increased data and tracking accuracy

Data-driven decisions are crucial within the digital marketing industry. Without accurate data, marketers can make ineffective strategy decisions which can lead to a waste of time, money, and resources (not to mention a loss of brand reputation).

As GTM helps marketers track user behaviour accurately, marketers can be confident that the data is precise enough to help form strategy decisions. Within GTM, tags can be triggered for different reasons e.g. page views, button clicks or form submissions. Therefore, the data collected is customised.

There is also a reduced risk of errors within GTM as no one is manually coding into the site, which gives marketers further confidence in the accuracy of the data provided. Furthermore, as there is less risk of technical errors, there is less chance of incorrect tracking and slow site speed.

3. GTM helps to improve site performance

GTM is a clear and neat way to organise the website codes, which means there is less chance of error and clutter on the website. It is also important to note that GTM tags do not slow site speed or page load time. This is because tags that are managed through GTM load asynchronously (independently from the rest of the content on the site). Because of this, the tags essentially don’t interfere with or block the loading times for other blocks of content on the site.

We all know how annoying it is when you go on a website and it takes forever to load. It is widely known that the faster the loading time, the lower bounce rates and the better the user experience; all of which can contribute to better rankings in the SERPs.

As you can see GTM has several benefits when it comes to tracking accuracy, increased efficiency and site performance.  Now let’s explore how GTM can improve marketing strategies and campaigns.

How can Google Tag Manager help improve marketing strategies and campaigns?

As mentioned above, GTM gives marketers greater control and efficiency when it comes to optimising campaigns and tracking user behaviour. Below I have broken down some of the key ways GTM can help you when it comes to developing, implementing and optimising marketing strategies and campaigns.

1.  Customisation with GTM

By increasing customisation in tracking for user interactions, GTM provides users with valuable insights that they can use to fine-tune and optimise their campaigns. Data is great but precise data is better and GTM gives you just that. For example, let’s say you want to track how many users have clicked to ‘sign up’ to their newsletter, they can use a GTM custom tag for that specific action. They could then monitor and track the clicks on that specific button in real-time.

2. Real-time data

As mentioned, real-time data tracking is a huge benefit of GTM. Marketers can make immediate changes to their campaigns or tags when needed. For example, if you notice that a particular Instagram campaign isn’t driving the results you hoped for, you can use GTM to adjust the tracking parameters to gather more accurate, precise data and then make a fast data-driven decision to improve the campaign. Not every campaign is going to work perfectly and that is ok, as long as you have a way to improve the campaign in real-time.

3. GTM lets you integrate analytics

Users can easily integrate analytic platforms, like Google Analytics, Google Ads and other platforms with GTM. By syncing up these platforms and making sure the data being sent to the platforms is coming from GTM, marketers can be confident that all data collected is accurate and synchronised across platforms.

4. Multi-channel campaign tracking

As a centralised tool, GTM makes it simple for marketers to monitor and track several different campaigns, across different platforms, all in one place. For one campaign, you might use email marketing and paid media ads. By using GTM you can ensure consistent data collection from all platforms to give better insights into how the campaign is performing overall. If one channel is driving significant results compared to another, it may be worth investing more in that channel.

Overall, GTM is a powerful tool for marketing strategy and campaigns because it lets marketers customise data collection, track data in real-time, integrate the tool with other analytics tools and track campaigns across multiple channels.

Despite the popularity and success of Google Tag Manager, it isn’t the only tracking tool out there. It’s time to explore some of GTM’s competitors.

Google Tag Manager vs other tracking tools

Google Tag Manager vs Adobe Launch

• Adobe Launch is part of the Adobe Experience Cloud. I feel it provides users with a more complex yet customisable solution when compared to GTM and is better suited to bigger enterprise organisations with more complex needs. As with GTM, Adobe Launch offers integrations with its own products and other external marketing tools, so if you use Adobe products, it can be a good option to go for. However, given it is more complex than GTM, it can be harder to use if you don’t have experience with the technical side of marketing. It is also important to note that Adobe Launch requires users to sign up for a subscription, so GTM is more budget-friendly as it’s entirely free.

Google Tag Manager vs Tealium

• Similar to Adobe Launch, Tealium is suited to enterprise-level businesses too. It offers advanced and complex audience segmentation features, real-time data tracking and hundreds of integrations with third-party marketing tools. It is a costly option for businesses so is less suitable for those with restrictive budgets.

Google Tag Manager vs Ensighten

• Ensighten is a tracking tool that is known for its compliance features and is suited to businesses that have strict security and data privacy regulations. In much the same way, that Adobe Launch and Tealium are better suited for larger more enterprise-level businesses, Ensighten offers advanced features that will appeal to businesses of that level. However, as with the others, it is far more complex, tricky to use if no experience and costly for businesses of a smaller level.

What are the challenges that come with using Google Tag Manager?

Despite the benefits, certain challenges come with using Google Tag Manager. Firstly, users may find the learning curve pretty steep when it comes to setting up the tags, triggers and different variables. Of course, GTM is a lot easier to use for novices compared to the other platforms outlined above but if you do not know how to set up these tags, it can take time to fully understand how the tool works.

For businesses with larger websites (and therefore multiple tags) consistently managing and tracking these tags can be tricky at first. GTM also requires consistent maintenance of the tags to make sure they stay accurate and compliant with evolving data privacy and security laws. As mentioned above, if Tags are not configured correctly, using GTM can slow down a website. Therefore, it is super important that users understand the tool and how to properly set up tags and maintain tracking processes.

The future of Google Tag Manager

As with most industries in the world, the future of GTM will likely involve AI and automation. This could involve more automated suggestions for tag setups or AI insights for optimising marketing campaigns. It is also likely that further advancements will occur due to complying with ever-evolving data protection and security regulations. It is also probable that GTM will introduce even more integrations.

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