GA4 Pipeline -Episode 1: Google Tag Manager | Where GA4 Events Begin
- Arif Khan
- Jan 6
- 2 min read
--author Arif Khan | founder zinzu.io
We’ll start with the first layer (Define) of the pipeline.
This is where Google Tag Manager comes into the picture.
Imagine you’re a marketer or analyst.
Your site already uses GA4, and GTM has been set up once.
Now you want to track visits to a specific page.
Without GTM
Ask engineers to change code
Wait for a sprint and deployment
Everything slows down
With GTM
Create an event in GTM
Name it and set a trigger (for example, page load)
Publish the change and deploy instantly
No application code change
What GTM enables
Define tracking without touching application code
Speed up launches
Test ideas without developer help
Code stays steady.
Tracking evolves fast.
What you define in Google Tag Manager
When you “create an event” in Google Tag Manager, you are defining three things.
Event name
A clear name that describes what happened(for example: page_view_pricing).
Trigger
The condition that decides when the event fires(for example: when a page loads or a button is clicked).
Metadata (parameters)
Additional context sent with the event(page URL, button text, page category, content from textbox etc.).
That’s it. Everything else in GTM exists to support these three ideas.
Google Tag Manager as a data modeling layer
Google Tag Manager is often described as a “tagging tool.”
That description is incomplete.
In practice, GTM decides:
What events exist
When they are considered meaningful
What context is attached to them
These are data modeling decisions, not implementation details.
Once an event name, trigger, and metadata are defined in GTM, every downstream system sees the world through that model.
If the model is clean, analysis is easy.
If the model is messy, no report can fix it.
Common GTM pitfalls
Most GA4 issues don’t start in reports. They start earlier.
Inconsistent event naming
Events firing at the wrong time
Overloaded or unclear metadata
Small decisions here have large downstream impact.
GTM defines the shape of your data.
What’s next ?
Once events are defined, the next step is straightforward but often misunderstood:
How do events actually leave your site or app?
In the next episode, we’ll look at the send layer; gtag.js and mobile SDKs and clarify what this layer does, and just as importantly, what it does not do.
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