Author Archives: Harm Linssen

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Broken tags, broken results: The PMax tracking challenge

Posted on by Harm Linssen

Google’s Performance Max (PMax) campaigns are powerful, but they’re only as effective as the data you feed them. When conversion tags don’t load correctly, the algorithm can’t optimize toward what really matters. The results are wasted budget, lost revenue, and a disrupted learning curve.

Let’s dive a bit deeper in how PMax works, what happens when data is missing, and why fixing measurement errors quickly is crucial for your business.

1. How Google Performance Max (PMax) works

Performance Max is a goal-based campaign type in Google Ads that uses machine learning to optimize performance across all of Google’s channels from search to display, to YouTube, Gmail and more.

You provide a budget, conversion goals (like purchases or leads), creatives and so called audience signals (to help PMax understand your ideal target audience). Then the algorithm decides which channels to use, which ad creatives to show and how much to bid in each auction.

The core input for optimization in PMax is conversion data. The system needs accurate feedback on which clicks or views actually lead to real business results. In order to receive such accurate input, PMax relies on conversion tags.

Unfortunately there are many reasons that can cause errors in such tags. The most common causes are code being removed or overwritten by site updates, version rollbacks or deployments and redesign.

It’s also common that the tag manager is misconfigured, leading to wrong triggers, leading to conflicts with other tags or causing a tag to fire more than once resulting in duplication or blocking.

2. Impact of a conversion tag not loading correctly

If your conversion tag doesn’t fire or loads inconsistently, Google’s optimization is effectively blinded. Google’s algorithm thinks some traffic isn’t converting, so it reduces spend there.

You waste budget because spending shifts toward cheap clicks or impressions that don’t actually convert. You end up paying for traffic without getting the real sales signals the system needs.

Also you will lose revenue as high-value traffic sources may be underfunded because their conversions aren’t recorded. As a result effective channels get scaled down, leading to fewer overall sales.

3. Impact of incomplete or missing data on the algorithm

Most companies already monitor uptime, server health, and even SEO. But what about the actual data being collected from users? If a tracking tag breaks, a dataLayer variable changes, or a marketing pixel stops firing, you may not notice until revenue drops or campaigns underperform.

A tag that is misfiring for a few hours up to a few days leads to short-term data loss. The PMax system may misinterpret signals and reallocate budget poorly. Some inefficiency occurs, but performance can bounce back quickly once fixed.

When a tag is not firing several days or more the algorithm starts to “re-learn” using incomplete data, damaging the targeting and bidding models and undoing weeks of optimization. And once an issue is found and resolved, the campaign requires a significant amount of fresh conversion data to train itself again.

4. How long does the impact last after fixing the tag?

With minor outages between several hours to a day the recovery usually takes between 1 to 3 days.

Major outages of several days or weeks will take at least a similar recovery time. For example seven days of broken tracking often means seven up to fourteen of recovery. The reason is that machine learning models weigh recent history most heavily. Once accurate data is collected again, the system needs to rebuild confidence before it can scale efficiently.

The bottom line for Performance Marketers

  • A broken conversion tag = wasted budget + lost revenue.
  • The algorithm’s learning curve gets disrupted, leading to inefficient spending even after the issue is fixed.
  • Recovery time typically mirrors the outage length, until enough clean data is gathered again.
  • It is crucial for your business to detect errors as they happen and solve them immediately.

Conversion tracking isn’t a technical detail, it’s business-critical and therefore you need a tag monitoring solution like Code Cube Tag Monitor which will detect any tag error instantly.

Reliable tagging ensures your PMax- and other performance campaigns allocate spend toward real customers, not just clicks.

Blog

Understaffed and overwhelmed? Why Code Cube is a lifesaver when specialists are hard to find.

Posted on by Harm Linssen

Hiring technical web analysts has never been harder. The labor market is tight, the competition for digital talent is fierce, and the workload keeps growing. Marketing and analytics teams are expected to deliver accurate, actionable insights, and this while there is often a lack of capacity.

So how do you stay on top of your data when you’re understaffed and still expected to deliver high-performance results?

The answer is simple: just automate what slows you down.

The hidden time sink: manual data checks

Many teams still rely on manual checks to ensure their tracking setup is working. That means opening multiple containers, comparing dashboards, verifying event triggers, and searching for the root cause of discrepancies between the backend and the analytics tools.

This kind of detective work is not only boring and repetitive, it’s also time-consuming, error-prone, and demotivating. It pulls skilled analysts away from higher-value tasks like analysis, optimization, and strategic thinking.

The case for Code Cube’s data collection monitoring

Code Cube offers automated, real-time monitoring of your entire data collection setup. That includes client-side tags, server-side implementations, and dataLayer changes—across every domain, GTM container, and country.

Here’s how we help teams stay effective, even when short-staffed:

  • Catch tracking issues immediately: get real-time alerts before bad data damages your reports or affects your campaigns.
  • No more manual checks:, save hours per week by eliminating repetitive QA tasks.
  • Faster debugging: pinpoint issues across containers and environments in minutes, not days.
  • Peace of mind: reduce friction between developers and marketers with clear, automated insights.

    • While hiring isn’t always an option, scaling smarter is

    Let’s face it: growing your team isn’t always realistic in today’s job market. But what you can do is give your current team better tools. A SaaS monitoring solution like Code Cube doesn’t replace your analysts, it amplifies them. It lets them do more of what they’re good at, and less of what slows them down.

    In a world where time and talent are limited, automation isn’t just helpful, it’s essential.

    Blog

    You’re monitoring everything – except the one thing that matters most.

    Posted on by Harm Linssen

    Successful e-commerce companies monitor crucial applications to ensure proper performance and safety. There are five crucial areas which e-commerce companies should monitor to take their performance to the next level.

    Monitoring is common and widespread in four of the areas below. In one area, the fifth one, many parties are still missing out on a huge opportunity.

    1. Website uptime monitoring: Because downtime immediately damages user experience, brand reputation, sales, and SEO, you can use a tool like Uptime Robot or Pingdom to be alerted in real-time when your website goes down or an SSL certificate expires.
    2. Server & database monitoring: A slow or overloaded server can lead to errors and data loss. Using a tool like Datadog provides real-time insights and alerts on server performance and query times.
    3. Website traffic monitoring: With a web analytics tool like Google Analytics you can track user behavior which helps optimize marketing, UX, and content.
    4. SEO monitoring: Visibility in search engines drives organic traffic and sales so you should monitor keyword rankings, traffic sources, and Core Web Vitals using tools like Google Search Console, SEMrush or Screaming Frog.
    5. Data collection monitoring: Reliable data is essential for any online business. If tracking is broken or misconfigured, decisions based on that data, like marketing spend, will be flawed. Monitoring is crucial to have reliable data. And yet, for some reason, this type of monitoring is still often overlooked.


      6. Data collection monitoring: the missing piece in most digital monitoring stacks

      In the digital economy, data drives decisions. For e-commerce companies relying on online advertising, accurate tracking is not a luxury, it’s a necessity.

      Without proper monitoring of tags, scripts, and dataLayer activities, your tags can misfire, leading to poor decisions, wasted ad spend, and frustrated users. Just like uptime- or server monitoring protects your site’s availability, dataLayer- and tag monitoring protects the integrity of your data and ultimately, the success of your business.

    Why monitoring your website’s data collection & tracking is essential for digital success

    Most companies already monitor uptime, server health, and even SEO. But what about the actual data being collected from users? If a tracking tag breaks, a dataLayer variable changes, or a marketing pixel stops firing, you may not notice until revenue drops or campaigns underperform.

    Solutions like Tag Monitor and Datalayer Guard were created to fill this critical blind spot. They ensure your analytics implementation stays intact, your tags function as expected, and any change is instantly flagged so you can act before damage occurs.

    1. Protect revenue by preventing invisible breakages

    Tracking issues don’t always bring a website down but they can quietly cost you thousands in missed revenue. For example:

    • A disabled or removed purchase event pixel may go unnoticed.
    • A corrupted dataLayer may send the wrong values to your marketing stack.
    • A tag misfiring on certain browsers or devices could skew your campaign metrics.

    Unlike uptime monitoring (which notifies you when the site is down), tracking monitoring notifies you when your data goes down.

    2. Accurate tracking is the foundation of all marketing decisions

    Just like uptime is essential to ensure a website works for users, tracking accuracy is essential to ensure your data works for you. Marketing performance, customer behavior, conversion funnels and attribution models all depend on clean, consistent data.

    Without proper monitoring:

    • Ad platforms may misattribute conversions.
    • A/B tests may be invalidated.
    • User journeys may go untracked.
    • Retargeting audiences may break silently.

    “You can’t manage what you don’t measure.”

    Monitoring your tag behavior and data collection points helps ensure Google Analytics, Meta Pixels, and other critical scripts are always firing correctly with the right parameters, at the right time.

    3. Maintain trust in your metrics and reports

    If your tracking breaks and nobody notices, it will have a significant negative impact on costs and revenue. Decisions will be based on flawed dashboards and algorithms will optimize with false assumptions. Monitoring your dataLayer and scripts ensures your marketing, product, and analytics teams always have reliable data.

    With tools like DataLayer Guard, you can:

    • Validate whether specific variables (like transactionId, pageType, or userStatus) are consistently available.
    • Alert your team if any key data object is missing or malformed.
    • Ensure your tag management systems (like GTM) are injecting the right scripts at the right times.

    4. Prevent data loss due to developer or CMS changes

    Marketing teams are often blindsided by website updates or CMS/plugin changes that unintentionally break analytics. A minor JavaScript refactor or a new page template might:

    • Change the structure of the dataLayer.
    • Remove a key tag or delay its loading.
    • Shift the timing of event pushes.

    With automated tracking monitoring, you’re no longer left in the dark. Any deviation from expected tag behavior or data values triggers real-time alerts, so you can fix problems before they affect performance.

    5. Stay compliant and secure in a privacy-focused world

    In the GDPR era, collecting data responsibly is just as important as collecting it accurately. Monitoring solutions help:

    • Detect unauthorized or unintended data collection.
    • Ensure tags only fire with user consent.
    • Keep a log of what was tracked, where, and why. This is useful for audits and legal documentation.

    6. Boost SEO and site performance by controlling third-party tags

    Poorly implemented tags can slow your site or affect performance metrics like Core Web Vitals negatively impacting both UX and SEO. By tracking tag performance and loading behavior:

    • You can detect and mitigate slow or broken scripts.
    • Avoid bloated tag managers or outdated pixels.
    • Keep your technical SEO clean and efficient.

    7. Enable faster response- and debugging times

    When an error occurs in uptime, you’re likely notified immediately. So should your marketing and analytics teams when conversions aren’t being tracked. By using tools like Tag Monitor you can:

    • Set alerts via Slack, email, or other channels.
    • Empower non-technical teams to take ownership of their tracking setup.
    • Reduce dependency on time consuming and inefficient everyday validation.

    Final thought: You can’t afford to fly blind

    Just like you wouldn’t run an e-commerce business without uptime-, error-, and server monitoring, you shouldn’t run online advertising and analytics without tracking monitoring.

    Your revenue and success depend on the accuracy of your data infrastructure.

    Don’t let silent failures break your business.
    Monitor your tags. Guard your data. Protect your performance.

    Blog

    Strategic data tracking monitoring; evaluating build versus buy for long-term value.

    Posted on by Harm Linssen

    Let me ask you a rhetorical question. Should a plumber bake bread for his lunch, just because he can? Or will it be more efficient to buy bread around the corner?

    The answer is obvious, right? Just because a plumber might be able to bake bread, it is not recommended for him to do so. Instead the plumber should focus on his core business and customers while enjoying better and cheaper bread from the bakery.

    Of course the example of the plumber is a bit far-fetched compared to for example a technical web analyst who is considering building a software solution himself. But still “Make or buy?” remains a persistent recurring question among tech companies and is part of a broader discussion that is currently taking place in the entire industry.

    Because you can, does it mean you should?

    Almost all companies waste many hours debugging and performing manual checks due to data tracking issues. Code Cube is a SaaS solution offering an advanced and proven real-time tracking monitoring solution to tackle these challenges. Code Cube can be implemented in a matter of hours and companies can start saving time and money instantly.

    Despite all the advantages our solution offers, every now and then we come across a potential customer which plans to develop a solution themselves. Building something in-house is fun, it will give you a sense of being in control and also you want to show your customers what you are capable of.

    But even while you possibly can build a monitoring solution yourself, does it actually make sense?

    Why you should outsource your data tracking monitoring

    Focus and speed

    Code Cube started developing its solutions already a few years ago. It took us two years to build the browser bot. We do not offer just a cockpit, we offer the complete engine, including scenario analysis, anomaly detection and other advanced features.

    Building such a technology internally causes distraction and teams can easily lose focus on their main objectives. Rather than diverting your team’s energy into building and maintaining new (and most likely inferior) software, you should concentrate on your company’s core competencies.

    Instead of months or years of internal development, Code Cube’s SaaS tag- and dataLayer monitoring solutions are ready to go and can be deployed in a few hours without the need for any developer. We provide continuous improvements without requiring you to manage version upgrades.

    Maintenance and support

    In-house building will require recurring bug fixes, security patches, and constant compatibility work. With an in-house built system you always have the possibility of someone leaving the company and putting the complete system at risk.

    Code Cube offers a solution with an extremely open character. We make all raw datasets (real-time) available for our customers and you will get dedicated customer support, training and onboarding from experts who know the Code Cube system inside out.

    The tracking monitoring functionalities have been (and are continuously being) updated and improved based on feedback of expert users. This ensures you will benefit from ongoing new capabilities without reinvestment.

    The Datalayer Guard and Tag Monitor modules are validated with many clients which ensures that your tracking monitoring is ready to go and battle-tested.

    Costs

    Internal tech projects are notorious for delays and cost overruns – with Code Cube you don’t have any such risk.

    With Code Cube you have no upfront investment. There is no need to hire or allocate developers, a project manager, and a QA engineer nor to invest in setting up a Cloud infrastructure.

    Code Cube’s costs are predictable and transparent, whereas internal development, maintenance and the overall cost of ownership has many unknowns. Think about salaries, training, tech stack, maintenance, and downtime… Building your tracking monitoring internally is likely to end up costing you far more than our subscription.

    Our solution will deliver value and ROI immediately, compared to the long, costly development period of an in-house system. The payback period will be extremely short due to immediate time savings. There will be no more​ need for time ​wasting manual checks and debugging of any error will be much faster. As such the efficiency improvements will offset the SaaS cost much quicker than an internal development project can reach breakeven.

    Conclusion

    It’s a familiar pattern. Teams spent years building their own in-house solution, for example for personalization or an analytics tool. It often comes with pride, but also with a growing burden of maintenance and distraction.

    Companies are realizing more and more that building in-house isn’t always sustainable. So why should you buy a SaaS tool like Code Cube, but still build other tools yourself?

    The real value lies in what you do with your data — not in building the plumbing around it. A self-built solution takes a lot of time, causes a lack of focus within your organisation, will never be as good, is vulnerable to change and is harder to maintain. It will take years, if ever, to earn the investment back.

    We invite you to test Code Cube for free and to instantly reap the fruits of tracking monitoring.