Zones

Use zones to control and sandbox access to tagging on your sites.

This article is for advanced users who wish to set up zones for Tag Manager containers.

This feature is only available in Google Tag Manager 360, which is included in the Google Marketing Platform.

A zone allows you to link additional Tag Manager containers when your main container loads, so that the linked containers are allowed to fire tags on your website. Linked containers may be associated with any Tag Manager account, including containers owned and managed by 3rd parties.

Example uses:

A 3rd party ad agency is given access to a zone that fires tags on specific pages using only the tag types that are relevant to the advertising campaigns they are working on.
The recruiting team is given access to publish containers on the careers section of your website.
The marketing team is given access to publish containers on most pages, but are limited to only being able to edit (but not publish) more secure content (e.g. shopping cart pages) so that the changes must go through a review and approval process.

You can configure zone boundaries that define the pages on which the zone is active, and restrict the types of tags that a zone can fire.

Combined with approvals, zones can help you create an effective tag management workflow for your organization. You can set completely different users and permissions for the main and linked Tag Manager containers, and for other Google tags that are linked to a zone. Admins of the main container do not need or gain access to the linked containers.

Conversion linker and zones

The conversion linker tag automatically detects the ad click information in your key events page URLs, and stores this information in first-party cookies on your domain. It is recommended to implement the conversion linker tag on all pages of a website. When implementing the conversion linker tag in a zone container, make sure that the container is linked on all pages of the website. If the zone container cannot cover all pages of the user's journey on the site, implement the conversion linker tag directly in the parent container for the site.

In some cases, it may be necessary to implement the conversion linker tag in the parent container for the site and in one or more linked zone containers. While this may result in the tag being triggered multiple times for a single click event, it will not impact the accuracy of key event measurement.

Zone triggers and data layer event timing

If a zone tag uses a data layer event trigger, it is important to confirm that the data layer event takes place after the zone has loaded. If the data layer event occurs before the zone has loaded, the tag will not fire.

For example, if a zone loads at "All Page - Container Load", and a tag in the zone uses the data layer "consent initialization" event as its trigger, the tag will not fire because the "consent initialization" event occurs before "All Page - Container Load". In this scenario you would need to change the trigger for the zone tag to an event that occurs after the zone has loaded.

Moving a container to a different account

If an account moves to a different organization, it retains all current zones that have been created or published. If the account retains 360 status there will be no change to the functionality of the container. If the account does not retain 360 status after the move, you can't create new zones and some functionality may be limited. However, the edit function and all runtime behavior will continue to work as before.

Create zones

Link to Tag Manager containers

Use this method to create a zone that links to a Tag Manager container. To link to Google tags, use the method described in Link to Google tags.

To create a new zone that links to a Tag Manager container:

In Tag Manager, click Zones NEW.
In Zone Configuration, click to add one or more containers.
Select a container using one of the following actions:
1. Click and select a container from the current account.
2. Manually enter a Container ID and optional Nickname.
  Note: You can enter the ID of any container. It does not need to be in the same account.
Optional: In Boundaries, select Some pages to specify which pages linked containers are allowed to fire tags on. See Boundaries for more.
Optional: Use the Type Restrictions toggle to specify which types of tags, triggers, or variables linked containers are allowed to fire. See Type restrictions for more.
Give your zone a title and click Save.
Save and publish your workspace for the changes to take effect.

Boundaries

Boundaries allow you to choose which pages your zone fires on.

The two main options are All pages (default) and Some pages. For Some pages, you can set the conditions for your zone container to fire. Conditions operate in the same way as triggers.

The default page view trigger is set to Initialization. To access this setting, select > Show custom evaluation.

Type restrictions

Type restrictions allow you to restrict which tags fire in your zone. This gives you additional control and security over how your zone behaves.

You can set restrictions based on tag types, trigger types, variable types and script types.

Restrictions default to:

Google tag types: All allowed
Trigger types: All allowed
Variable types: All allowed except custom JavaScript
Script and iframe tag types: None allowed
Pixel types: None allowed
Sandboxed script types: None allowed.
Note: To allow use of custom templates, enable Sandboxed script types.

Edit a zone

To edit a zone:

Click Zones and then click the name of the zone you would like to edit.
Edit Zone Configuration, Zone Boundaries, and Type Restrictions as desired.
Save and publish your workspace for the changes to take effect.

Note: Communication across zones is not supported. Updates to the data layer of your main container may not get reflected in a linked container.

Related resources

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