• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, July 12, 2013

Marketers have begun to take the reins from IT and have become the majority stakeholders of customer data integration projects, including tag management --although the majority still struggle with data integration challenges.

In fact, 96% of companies have digital data integration challenges, but believe resolving these challenges will help them better understand their customer journeys and improve the customer experience, according to the Forrester Consulting study, commissioned by Tealium.

The study also confirms a trend by marketers to increase their tag management budget by 35% this year compared with last year. The study aims to better understand marketers' perspectives on tag management systems.

In 2013, marketers will spend an average of 9.2% of their marketing budget on tag management, up 35% from the year-ago quarter, driven by an increase in return on investments, according to the study.

Brand adoption rates and global expansion plans by platform providers make it clear that marketers have begun to better understand tag management systems. European-based TagMan announced the appointment of Thomas Hammell as vice president of North American sales, responsible for TagMan's revenue growth and solution selling strategies. Earlier this year, the company claimed 21 consecutive quarters of revenue growth.

Jon Baron, CEO at TagMan, agrees that marketers are taking a more active role from IT. "What we see are much happier marketing and technology teams," he said.

Most of the success has come from improved quality of analytics, according to the Forrester study. Some 74% of marketers said they have seen an increase in the quality of analytics implementations attributable to their tag management platform. About 69% say they see improved marketing agility, 63% better Web site performance, 38% standard data collection across vendors, 30% reduced IT costs, and 1% other.

The most important characteristics that marketers look for in a tag management system vary, but there are two clear winners. Some 74% cite ease of use; and 72%, scale and performance. About 40% say privacy compliance is important; followed by 28%, mobile support; 24%, vendor neutrality; and 14%, support for vendors.

Tag systems continue to take on an expansive role as data becomes more important. Almost two-thirds of survey respondents view their tag management system as a way to manage the exchange of data between visitors and digital marketing vendors.

It turns out that 94% see the role of tag management within data integration as the next step in the evolution of managing tags on their company's Web site. About 64% say managing services for collecting and segmenting data is the most important capability of a tag management system when it comes to data management, per the study.

"Archery Target with Arrow" photo from Shutterstock.