This post is by Paul Cook, Founder, Positive Feedback

When Google bought DoubleClick and - a year or so later - Microsoft acquired Atlas, there were genuine worries amongst media agencies about the two biggest online media owners having access to such powerful data about their advertisers’ campaigns.

Since then, the worries have abated and both DC and Atlas still control the vast bulk of the market.  Why?  Because there is a no credible alternative to break this dependency and they are already too plugged into agency infrastructure for switching elsewhere to be viable.

But, that doesn’t mean that their access to and control of the majority of UK (and worldwide) online advertising data has disappeared, nor that such power should be given up so easily.  Agencies are aware that their strategic value to clients is being lost as their core service - the group buying of media - is becoming commoditised.  They know their long-term value will come from not only better collation and analysis of advertisers’ campaign data, but more importantly, allowing them to use it to enhance targeting.  So, while, for now, Google and Microsoft’s ownership of the two biggest ad-servers in the Western world is only of minor concern, its repercussions are likely to completely undermine the future value of the media agency.

But there is a way around this and it centres on winning back control of the site-tagging process.  At the moment, DC and Atlas are wrapped up in a battle to control the master tag - the tag to rule them all - the one site tag into which all other site tags can be plugged to make de-duplication of results possible.  The battle is being waged by all-comers - affiliate networks, site-side analytics companies, search agencies and, of course, the ad servers.  All of these companies are giving away free tag management solutions because they know it will lock clients into their technology, their data and their media.

But none of these companies is in the strategic position of being able to take the data that a master tag delivers and feed back to the advertiser in a holistic way - a view that enables them to decide sensibly where and how their online budgets should be spent.  That role - for now - remains with the media agency.  So, it’s time then that the agency made efforts to win back control of tagging by owning the master tag themselves.  There’s no such thing as a ‘free’ tag management solution, in fact, freedom is the last thing you get with a piggy-back solution.

This is why we’ve developed a standalone Tag Management System, TagMan, to put agencies back in control.  It’s a one-tag system that allows the agency and the client to plug in every tag on an advertiser’s web page into one back-end with one interface.  The data this feeds back is gold-dust and the simplicity of adding, editing and removing campaign tags from that point on is worlds ahead of anything currently available.  It can be done, for example, just by visiting the relevant page on the client site.

But, while freeing up all the time and energy that goes into tagging a site properly is vital, it is the strategic win of taking back control of a client’s data that offers the biggest gains.  DoubleClick and Atlas are now aware fully of the value of having campaign data passing through their doors and are keen to do as much with it as it goes by.  If these companies do see shifting media agency revenue as a potential source for future growth then the ammunition in the battle is data.  Knowing this, it seems a strange advantage to hand over before the battle has begun and agencies need to find solutions like TagMan to provide the armoury they need.