Overview
At first glance, ObservePoint and Tag Managers (like Google Tag Manager, Adobe Launch, Ensighten, or Tealium) may seem to overlap — both deal with tags, scripts, and data collection.
But they actually serve very different purposes:
Tag Managers are deployment tools — they let you add, remove, and organize tags across your site without direct code changes.
ObservePoint is a testing and validation platform — it audits your site to make sure the tags deployed are working properly, approved, and compliant.
When used together, they create a closed-loop system: one tool to deploy tags, and another to validate them.
ObservePoint vs. Tag Manager
On one hand, ObservePoint ensures that the tags you deploy with a TMS — plus any cookies, scripts, or piggybacked technologies — are working as intended.
Main features:
Audit: Crawl thousands of pages to inventory all tags and technologies.
Validate: Confirm that each tag fires properly, with correct IDs and data.
Monitor: Continuously check that deployments stay accurate over time.
Privacy & Compliance: Ensure tag and cookies consent preferences are enforced.
On the other hand, a Tag Management System (TMS) is like the control panel for your website tags.
An example would be adding a Google Analytics event tag to fire on a form submission through Google Tag Manager (GTM). However, one limitation that a TMS has is that it doesn’t tell you if the tag is firing correctly, firing twice, missing on key pages, or violating consent rules.
Main features:
Deploys tags without touching source code.
Organizes & centralizes your tags in one place.
Triggers tags based on user actions, page events, or custom rules.
Updates tags quickly across multiple pages or domains.
How They Work Together
Instead of replacing each other, ObservePoint and Tag Managers complement each other:
Deploy in TMS
You add or update tags in your Tag Manager.
Triggers and rules define where tags should fire.
Validate with ObservePoint
ObservePoint audits your site to check whether the tag is firing correctly.
It identifies missing, broken, duplicate, or rogue tags.
It ensures tags comply with governance rules and privacy preferences.
Repeat & Improve
Audit results feed back into TMS updates.
Continuous monitoring ensures changes remain healthy after site updates or releases.
Conclusion
By using them together, you can confidently manage your data collection — deploying tags quickly while ensuring the accuracy, compliance, and trustworthiness of your analytics.