[Huawei Developers] Jack Wu Shenzhen:
From October 22 to 24, the HUAWEI DEVELOPER CONFERENCE 2021 (HDC.Together) was held in Songshan Lake, Dongguan. At the HMS Core 6.0: App Services technical session, the product executive of HUAWEI Dynamic Tag Manager (DTM) gave a speech on codeless tag management, and detailed the functions and advantages of DTM, attracting much attention from the audience.

As a tag management system, DTM can help developers flexibly manage data tracking tags for their apps without coding, empowering them to dynamically track specific events and report data to third-party analytics platforms with ease. Such a feature piqued the interests of many developers who attended the conference.

To explain how data is collected and reported without coding, let's look at the DTM service process in the figure above. DTM consists of a cloud portal and client. Developers can create a configuration file on the portal, which is then downloaded by the DTM SDK integrated into their apps. When a user clicks an ad or button in the app, the DTM SDK will collect, process, and send data based on the configuration file. The data can then be sent to HUAWEI Analytics or third-party analytics platforms as required. The configuration process is highly flexible, and even operations personnel with no coding experience can quickly create a configuration file on their own, reducing the workload of programmers.

During the HMS Core 6.0: App Services technical session, the product executive demonstrated how to use DTM with an online shopping app. When a user taps Add to Shopping Cart, the shopping app reports an event containing relevant data to a third-party analytics platform. To implement this feature, we can create a configuration file on DTM, which consists of three parts:

When to report data: This part determines when data will be reported, such as when a user taps the Add to Shopping Cart button.

What data to send: This part configures which data to be sent to the analytics platform, such as product name, color, and version.

Where data is sent to: This part specifies one or more analytics platforms to which the data is reported, for example, HUAWEI Analytics and HUAWEI Ads.

After such an event is generated, the DTM SDK will quickly collect and send the event to the specified analytics platforms based on the configuration file.

The DTM product executive also introduced another big advantage of DTM, which is visual event tracking. With visual event tracking, the native app or web app screen can be replicated on the DTM portal, allowing marketers and developers to directly add tracking events and parameters by clicking relevant elements on the portal page. This has the effect of considerably improving data collection efficiency.

DTM empowers developers to obtain and distribute data with ease by configuring rules or adding visual events.​

Efficient Ad Conversion Tracking with DTM

During the session, a product expert from HUAWEI Ads gave a presentation on how HUAWEI Ads and DTM work together to track ad conversions efficiently, and shared his experience of using DTM.

Figure: Presentation on how HUAWEI Ads and DTM work together to track ad conversions efficiently​

According to Huawei's statistical data, around 35% of web advertisers now use DTM to promote ad conversions, helping significantly reduce their workloads and improve efficiency. Before using DTM, web advertisers needed to add tracking code to individual web pages, and test and release the code, which is usually a time-consuming process. Following the adoption of DTM, web advertisers can now configure, test, and release tracking events using DTM, reducing the overall process time by 80%. In addition, when tracking events need to be changed, web advertisers can directly do so on the DTM portal without having to write additional code or release an app update, sharply shortening the development period. It comes as no surprise that event tracking with DTM is now the first choice for HUAWEI Ads web advertisers to track conversions on web pages.

Refined Operations with DTM

Figure: Huawei personnel explain DTM functions to developers​

DTM garnered much attention for itself at this year's HDC, thanks to its flexibility, efficiency, low cost, support for multiple platforms, and ability to provide mobile app and web page data tracking without coding. Ultimately, the key advantage of DTM is that it allows operations personnel to easily configure and modify rules for reporting events to various analytics platforms, which not only helps reduce development costs but also allows operations personnel to quickly obtain a wide range of data and adjust their operations strategies accordingly.

To learn more about DTM, please visit:

>> DTM official website

>> DTM development guide

>> DTM codelab

If you have any questions, submit a ticket online.