Google Tag Manager and Ad Tracking in Slate

Overview

You may need to set-up various 3rd party trackers in Slate. These trackers could include Google Analytics or advertising network conversion tracking from Google or Facebook.

You can setup these trackers directly in Slate, but the preferred method is to set-up a tag management system like Google Tag Manager (GTM). This allows you to centralize all your pixels for

1. easier visibility into all the tags placed on your websites

2. easily permission various agencies to place their own pixels 

3. better control over page rendering times

Giving Waybetter Marketing Access

Unless you have reasons otherwise, we suggest giving Waybetter full access to GTM and Analytics for the length of our engagement. This will allow us a full understanding of the potential impact of the changes we are making on your behalf. If you have a strong internal technical team with a good understanding of tag management best practices, ask them to assign the appropriate privileges to us for your deployment.

• See Onboarding Requirements

Google Tag Manager Code Example

You can copy and paste the Google GTM code directly out of the GTM interface, but we suggest some slight additions. 

Make sure you update the "GTM-CODE-HERE" text with id from the Google Tag Manager interface. Note: this is meant as guidance and should be customized to your instance and for exact code, please pull directly from your GTM instance.

var s_dl = {
"page_platform":"Slate"
}
var dataLayer = window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
dataLayer.push(s_dl);
(function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-CODE-HERE');

Setting up GTM in Slate 

There are two methods you can use to set-up Google Tag Manager. Make sure you only use 1 method, otherwise loading Google Tag Manager twice will cause your website to load more slowly.

1. Directly in the Slate template

2. Within a configuration key

Alternately to setting GTM, you can directly setup global tracking tags from analytics and advertisers companies the same way.

Directly in the Slate Template

 "Once you have prepared the tracking code, you can embed this code into the /shared/build.xslt template file, which can be edited through the File Editor by clicking on the file name.  You will want to place the code just above the </head> closing tag.  This will ensure that the script loads at the beginning of the page load, which may be necessary for conversion events later. "

You will also need to wrap the example code in a <script> tag.

Benefits

• Harder to change, less likely to accidentally break Google Tag Manager

Cons

• Requires a technical resource to make this change

Source: https://technolutions.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360033142891-Embedding-Google-Analytics-and-Conversion-Tracking