Google announced this month that starting April 10, 2025, Google Tag Manager containers with Google Ads tags and/or Campaign Manager Floodlight tags implemented will automatically load a Google Tag first before those tags fire. While this announcement may feel a little rushed, luckily, we’re here to help provide action items and considerations for your teams and agencies to take to prepare for this update. Read on to learn more about the update and what you can do.
What does this mean for you?
Google has said that the Google Tag is a prerequisite for sending events to Google services, such as GA4, Google Ads and Campaign Manager Floodlights. However, this “rule” hasn’t been enforced, in that, if you had Google Ads tags and/or Campaign Manager Floodlight tags in your GTM container and didn’t have an associated Google Tag with each, your data wasn’t adversely affected.
Not so for GA4 users – If your GA4 Google Tag didn’t fire before your GA4 event tags, you would see rather severe data attribution issues. But that wasn’t the case for Google Ads or Floodlights tag data in those platforms.
Until now. For those platforms, the associated Google Tag will have the same benefits as it does for GA4: Improve data quality, improve conversion attribution and provide more control over data collection settings. To take advantage of those benefits, it is necessary to fire that Google Tag before any Google Ads and/or Floodlight event tags in GTM.
If you don’t have a Google Tag implemented in your GTM container to fire before your Google Ads tags, or likewise with CM Floodlights, Google will automatically fire a Google Tag for them before those tags fire.
What you can do.
We recommend implementing the Google Tag(s) for these platforms rather than waiting for the automation solution so that you have more control over the data collection and tag behavior.
Steps to prepare:
1. Check your GTM container for an update in the Container diagnostics banner referring to Missing Google tags.
2. When you click Add Google Tags, you’re given the predefined Google Tags with the correct Measurement ID and trigger of Initialization - All Pages. The GTM user will need to click through the tags to confirm that the Google Ads measurement IDs (AW-xxxxx) and/or the Floodlight measurement IDs (DC-xxxxxx) are correct.
3. These tags aren’t automatically added and published; the GTM user will need to add the changes to the Workspace, and then publish.
4. Update complete!
Not quite. There are a number of considerations to keep in mind and review before these new Google Tag(s) are published in your GTM container.
Considerations
- One of the benefits of implementing a Google Tag for Google Ads and Floodlights is more control over data collection settings. One of these settings is “Allow user-provided data capabilities,” where you configure whether your Google Tag should allow user-provided data to be included in measurement.
(Google Ads Google Tag configuration)
- In order to take advantage of this feature, the platform user would need to accept the Google Terms of Service for User-Provided Data, enable the feature in the Google Tag settings in the platform, and then check the “Include user-provided data from your website” option in the individual Google Ads or Floodlight tags, as well as in the individual Floodlights Enhanced Conversions option in platform.
(Campaign Manager Floodlight tag in Google Tag Manager)
(Floodlight settings in Campaign Manager)
- In addition, your legal team will need to review this feature, what data it collects and how it is collected, as your user data privacy policy will need to be updated if this is enabled.
- We recommend reviewing the Google Tag settings and GTM tag settings to confirm this feature is not enabled if you do not have all of the privacy requirements and TOS accepted prior to publishing the new Google Tags.
- Another important consideration is data privacy rules compliance. The predefined Google Tags have the Measurement ID input and the trigger attached, but they are not compliant with data privacy laws such as CPRA or GDPR as is.
- Before publishing, you should review with your legal team what cookie categorization these Google Tags would fall under, and then apply the appropriate blocking triggers for that category. So if a user opts out of that category on your site, i.e., they don’t want to be tracked by marketing campaigns, then the Google Tag won't fire.
- These considerations will mean a lot of communication among many teams, internally and externally to be compliant when these Google Tags are published or if you choose to use Google’s automation.
Frequently Asked Questions
I already have a Google Tag for GA4 in my GTM container, why do I need another one (or two)?
- Google Tags have a field for Measurement ID, where they send data to that specific Google platform. You cannot combine Google Tags in GTM for multiple platforms. It is possible to do this in Google Tag settings, but we recommend separate Google Tags for separate platforms. In this case, that would be one for GA4, one for Google Ads and one for Floodlights.
Does this affect my GA4 Google Tag or my GA4 event tags in GTM?
- No, this update is only for Google Ads and Floodlight tags in GTM.
If I do nothing, what happens?
- Google will automatically send a Google Tag before any of your Google Ads or Floodlight tags fire. It’s not an option you turn on or configure, it will be done automatically. We recommend manually adding the Google Tags to have more control over the settings and tag behavior.
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