Data My Layer Please
Pedro Mondo Laid it Down like Gonzo
…While I cannot be 100% certain, this concept started with this blog post from Jim Gordon. What I can say for certain is that I first knew about this concept through Jan’s blog post on that topic. However, as I said at the beginning, I did not initially pay too much attention to this proposal. Now I think I am in a position to say that I understand it.
I am not going to explain it in full. My goal is to provide a quick summary of it. I would describe the EDDL as a JavaScript object that has only one function, push(), used to add more data to the data layer. This function has the following benefits:
- You do not need any more to get all the data at the top of the page. As you get more information about the web page, you push it into the data layer. In the example above about the cart, once the cart information is retrieved, it is added to the data layer.
- You can add listeners to the data layer and, for every push(), evaluate whether you need to do something about it. For example, once you get all the information about the page, you can send it to Adobe Analytics.
But not only this, I am seeing a clear trend regarding EDDL:
- My Adobe Analytics colleagues are actively recommending it to our clients, in place of CEDDL.
- I sponsored a few years ago a hackathon to build the Adobe Client Data Layer extension (ACDL), which is Adobe’s version of the EDDL concept.
- Our clients are showing more interest in it and, in some cases, implementing it.
With all of these in mind, I can finally say that I recommend you to move to this new data layer. I know it is not a simple task, but you should start planning for it.
