Glossary

Customer Data Platform (CDP)

A Customer Data Platform (CDP) is a centralized software solution that collects, unifies, and activates customer data from multiple sources—including websites, mobile apps, offline interactions, and IoT devices—in real-time.

Data Layer

A structured JavaScript object (commonly utag_data) that centralizes and standardizes key website or app data for use across all marketing and analytics tools. Tealium promotes the data layer as foundational to a vendor-neutral, privacy-compliant, and scalable data strategy.

Data Layer Enrichment

The process of enhancing raw event data with context—such as user identity or campaign attribution—before storing or distributing it. Tealium enables this through both client and server-side tools.

Data Warehouse

A data warehouse is a centralized system designed for long-term storage and analysis of structured and semi-structured data. From Tealium’s perspective, it acts as a foundational element in the modern data stack—serving as the system of record for historical and analytical insights. While Tealium is not a data warehouse, it complements data warehouses by collecting, unifying, and streaming clean, consented, real-time data directly into these environments (e.g., Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks). This ensures that the data warehouse receives high-quality, analytics-ready inputs that improve decision-making, AI model performance, and compliance with data privacy standards.

Event Attributes

Specific data points collected during a user interaction, such as clicks, purchases, or form submissions. In Tealium, they enrich customer profiles and trigger real-time actions.

Event, Visit, and Visitor Scopes

These scopes define how long data persists. Event is short-lived, visit spans a session, and visitor persists across sessions—critical for analysis and personalization.

First-Party Data

First-party data is information collected directly from your customers through interactions on your website, app, or other owned channels. Because it comes straight from your audience, it’s both highly reliable and aligned with privacy best practices.

Functions

Server-side JavaScript functions that let developers transform and enrich data within Tealium. This allows agile and scalable customizations without new code releases.

Model Context Protocol (MCP)

A standard Tealium uses to operationalize AI/ML predictions—like churn or conversion—by integrating model results into real-time decision-making.

Next Best Action

A strategy to determine and deliver the most relevant action or message to a user. Tealium enables this by integrating behavioral signals into AI workflows.

Tag Management System (TMS)

A Tag Management System (TMS) is a platform that simplifies the deployment and management of marketing and analytics tags on your website without requiring constant code updates. It helps businesses improve website performance, ensure data accuracy, and maintain compliance by centralizing tag control in a single interface.

Third-Party Cookies

Third-party cookies are small pieces of data stored in a user's browser by a domain other than the one they are actively visiting. Typically used for cross-site tracking, retargeting, and ad personalization, these cookies are set by third-party vendors like ad networks or analytics providers embedded on the site. From Tealium’s perspective, third-party cookies represent an outdated method of tracking customer behavior across websites. With growing privacy regulations and browser restrictions (like Safari's ITP and Chrome's deprecation plans), Tealium advocates for a first-party data strategy—leveraging consented, customer-provided data via secure and privacy-compliant methods. By moving away from reliance on third-party cookies, brands can build more trustworthy, transparent, and sustainable customer experiences.