TL;DR

• For years our home page declared: “It’s time to ditch Google Tag Manager.”

• After watching our edge‑first architecture outperform third‑party tags, Google wrote to us asking how we do first‑party measurement.

• The result is today’s first‑party tag gateway—now live for every Bily‑powered brand.

• Enterprise teams can migrate in one afternoon; see the Get Started section below.

1. A Slogan That Refused to Die

Back in 2021, when we pinned “It’s time to ditch Google Tag Manager” to the very top of bily.ai, it was more provocation than product spec. Third‑party tag containers were the default; first‑party data ownership felt like fiction. Yet the premise stayed on our landing page—unmoved through re‑brands, feature launches, and even the occasional investor side‑eye—because we believed the physics of the web would eventually agree with us.

Key principle: Signal should never leave the domain where it was born.

2. What We Built Instead of Waiting

• Bily Sensors – zero‑config, edge‑native collectors that stream events under your own domain.

• Bily Minions – reinforcement‑learning agents that optimise bids, budgets, and creative on every impression.

• First‑Party Proxy Layer – a transparent path that turns any third‑party tag call into a same‑site request without touching your origin.

3. Then Google Knocked

On April 10 2025 we received the email below from a Strategic Partnerships Lead at Google Ads:

“Hi Philippe,

I support strategic partnerships for Google Ads. I’d be interested in learning more about bily.ai and how you implement first‑party measurement. Before that call, can you please share the best point of contact at Bily that can execute an NDA?”

The message flipped the narrative. We weren’t pitching; Google was curious about our approach.

What We Showed Them

We introduced them to Sensors: first-party event listeners that don’t rely on external JavaScript payloads.

We showed them how we could capture every add-to-cart, every conversion, and every scroll—directly from the user’s browser—without involving Google domains.

And more importantly, we showed them how our system trains itself. The moment data is captured, it flows into Minions—our AI agents that clean, classify, and optimize ad spend in real time. No waiting for batch reports. No leaking signal to third parties. No begging platforms to understand what’s working.

April: The NDA Shift

On April 10, we got the email that marked the turn:

“I support strategic partnerships for Google Ads…

I’d be interested in learning more about how you implement first-party measurement.”

He asked for our point of contact to execute an NDA. That’s when we knew. They weren’t just watching. They were coming around.

4. Rapid‑Fire Collaboration

Within a week we were trading test plans, debugging header rewrites, and validating cookie behaviour in every modern browser. Two design imperatives guided the joint work:

1. No extra infrastructure. Brands shouldn’t spin up bespoke tagging servers.

2. Protocol fidelity. All requests must satisfy Google Analytics and Ads collection endpoints 1:1.

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5. What Ships Today

The gateway announced this month makes first‑party tagging a one‑click toggle. If you run Bily, it’s already live:

• Edge‑served script under yourbrand.com/gtag/js?id=G‑XXXX.

• Same‑site cookies for unbroken attribution.

• No code changes for existing Google tag snippets

6. Get Started (30‑Minute Checklist)

Need help? Enterprise migration slots are open → support@bily.ai

7. Where to Place the Email Screenshot

Visual proof is persuasive. We recommend inserting the screenshot:

• Directly after Section 3 (“Then Google Knocked”).

  Format: full‑width image, light drop‑shadow, alt‑text: “Initial outreach email from Google Ads partnership lead, April 10 2025.”

  Why here? Readers learn that Google initiated contact; the image stops skimmers and anchors the narrative in reality.

8. Why This Matters for Enterprise Teams

• Audit‑ready compliance. First‑party cookies eliminate cross‑border data jumps.

• Performance wins. Median LCP improved by 120 ms in beta cohorts.

• Strategic control. Your data pipeline is no longer gated by a third‑party domain.

May 2025: Google Announces First-Party Gateway

Two months later, Google introduced the first-party tag gateway—an infrastructure that lets advertisers serve measurement scripts from their own domains.

If that sounds familiar, it should. It’s exactly what we built.

Google framed it as a performance upgrade. We see it as something else entirely: a strategic reversal.

They didn’t just acknowledge the problem. They implemented our solution.

What This Means

Let me be clear:

This isn’t about winning a technical argument.

This is about rewriting the rules of attribution at the protocol layer.

Here’s the delta:

What Comes Next

This isn’t the end. It’s the beginning.

We didn’t just replace GTM. We replaced the whole paradigm:

• Sensors → real-time, self-healing instrumentation

• MCP → Memory, Context, Prompt agents per session

• Minions → Autonomous optimization workers that replace your media buyer

And the best part? You don’t need to lift a finger.

If you’re a Bily customer, it’s already live.

Your data is already cleaner.

Your attribution is already stronger.

Your spend is already smarter.

Why We Built It

From day one, Bily was a rebellion against the fragility of adtech.

We didn’t want to patch old systems. We wanted to build a new one—where truth flows from the edge, not a black box.

Where intelligence is local.

Where power belongs to the brand, not the platform.

This month, Google validated that rebellion.

They didn’t kill GTM.

They quietly admitted we were right to move on.

So, enterprise marketers: You can keep pretending your stack works.

Or you can join the team that forced Google to update theirs.

→ Book a strategy session

→ Or email: support@bily.ai

We’ll migrate your data. Rebuild your stack. And give you back control.