In this hopefully relatable but definitely actionable talk, Simo taps into his 10+ years of experience in helping others find solutions to their problems in open communities like product support forums, blog comment areas, and Measure Slack.

Simo explores the latest and greatest paradigm in Google's marketing stack: server-side tagging in Google Tag Manager. The benefits of moving data collection server-side are obvious – or are they? The same tools and mechanisms that help with data governance and oversight can be abused due to the opaqueness associated with moving data collections server-side. In this talk, Simo takes a honest look at just what problems server-side tagging seeks to address, and whether it actually manages to do what it’s set out to do.

Recent changes in how web browsers handle client-side state have unveiled something that many have known for a long time: first-party storage (cookies, localStorage, etc.) is unreliable. Initiatives like Intelligent Tracking Prevention (Safari/WebKit) and Enhanced Tracking Protection (Firefox/Mozilla) seek to erode ad tech’s capability to track users cross-site, at the expense of first-party analytics and advertising.

Plug-and-play analytics doesn't work - we should know that by now. But even an amazing, super-charged analytics pipeline will fail in an organization that lacks the maturity to maintain it.

Are you deeply knowledgable in JavaScript, R, the DOM, Python, AWS, jQuery, Google Cloud Platform, and SQL? Good for you! If you're not, should you be? What does "technical" mean, anyway? And, is it even possible for an analyst to dive into all of these different areas? English philosophy expert The Notorious C.M.O. (aka, Simo Ahava) returns to the show to share his thoughts on the subject in this episode. For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.

FINALLY! It's a show all about Google Tag Manager! Oh. Wait. What's that? We had Simo Ahava on the show and actually covered a different topic entirely? WHAT NINNYHEAD APPROVED THAT DECISION?! Well, what's done is done. With 'nary a trigger or a container referenced, but plenty of wisecracks about scrum masters and backlogs and "definitions of 'done,'" we once again managed to coast a bit over the one-hour mark. And, frankly, we're pretty pleased with the chat we had. You'll just have to go to Simo's blog if your jonesing for a GTM fix. For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.

Data quality is often taken for granted. Many organizations fall into complacency with tools like Google Analytics, where tracking is installed but rarely optimized, configured, or scrutinized. As it turns out, this type of plug-and-play analytics can be detrimental to your measurement strategy. In this talk, Simo will show his experiences of working with vastly different organizations and methodologies for tag management, highlighting the format with which he's had most success. He will also showcase how a basic setup of Google Analytics (or any other popular web analytics platform) is simply not enough, together with a case study or two of how to turn the limitations of these platforms to your advantage.

Are you using some event tracking to learn more about your visitors? Good. How about using Enhanced Ecommerce and the Page Visibility API to analyze content engagement? No? Simo will walk you through these advanced use cases, and provide you with a number of tools and resources you can use to think outside the box when using Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager. Inspiration is guaranteed.