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To better understand the obstacles Semmántica faced before adopting Trackingplan, we spoke with Pablo Urueña, a Digital Analytics Manager at the agency. With a multidisciplinary background, Pablo is deeply involved in client management, technical implementation, and data visualization, describing his role as a blend of technical and client management responsibilities.
As he comments, he is also responsible for implementing tagging guidelines, ensuring that data collection is structured and reliable across all platforms. He is also the team's go-to expert for tools like Google Tag Manager, Matomo, Google Analytics 4, and Looker Studio for reporting—meaning he’s also the one who has to troubleshoot issues, find solutions, and tackle challenges when things don’t work as expected.
Pablo’s daily responsibilities shift based on the client’s status. For new clients, Pablo conducts audits to pinpoint issues and potential enhancements, such as privacy configurations, improved Google Ads conversions, or e-commerce tracking optimization. For recurring clients, Pablo explains their focus is on periodic audits—ensuring data layers are accurate, pixels are functioning, and traffic or sales data is being tracked correctly.
However, before Trackingplan, their debugging and monitoring data quality processes were manual, time-consuming, and error-prone. The lack of automated alerts and real-time visibility made it difficult to catch issues early, resulting in delayed fixes and misaligned client expectations.
“With e-commerce clients that have thousands of product-category URLs, going through them one by one is impossible—there’s no way you could do it, even in a hundred lifetimes.“
Moreover, with data spread across multiple tools and platforms, Pablo’s team found it challenging to ensure that tracking remained consistent and reliable. This fragmentation not only led to potential data inconsistencies but also resulted in significant time loss, as the team had to manually piece together insights from various sources instead of focusing on strategic optimizations.
Beyond the technical challenges of tracking and debugging, Pablo also pointed out a major hurdle in digital analytics: proving its Return on Investment (ROI). Unlike paid campaigns, where it’s easier to estimate the expected return based on ad spend, analytics deals with insights and business intelligence—making it much harder to quantify its direct impact.
"With campaigns, you invest a certain amount and expect a specific return. But with analytics, you're talking about knowledge, about business intelligence. It’s difficult to make bold statements about what you’ll gain from that intelligence."
This challenge often leads to difficulties in justifying the resources needed for robust analytics implementations. While tracking and data accuracy are fundamental for optimizing marketing efforts, decision-makers sometimes struggle to see the immediate financial impact—making it harder to advocate for better tools and processes.
Trackingplan emerged as the ideal solution for Semmántica’s challenges, automated tracking validation, and improved visibility into the health of their client’s analytics setup.
In this regard, Pablo emphasized the impact of Trackingplan’s Health Summary and automated alerts in reducing manual work and identifying issues proactively.
“Trackingplan acts as the eye that sees everything. It allows me to identify new landings, traffic sources, or misconfigurations without needing to dig through Google Analytics manually.”
While debugging in Google Tag Manager is possible, as Pablo well knows, going through thousands of product-category URLs in large e-commerce clients is unfeasible.
This is where Trackingplan’s Automated Alert System becomes incredibly valuable. Pablo explains that these alerts, which notify him of missing data or events, Data Layer anomalies, or new fields being received, provide immediate visibility into issues that would have otherwise gone unnoticed.
Additionally, the “new” label in Trackingplan has proven especially helpful, as it helps them have clear visibility into newly received data or landings, sparing analytics specialists from having to dig through Google Analytics 4 campaign data manually. This proactive monitoring feature not only enhances efficiency but also ensures that data is aligned and accurate right from the start. For instance, as Pablo mentions, in Google Analytics, he wouldn't know if something is new unless he manually searched for a campaign and checked if data started coming in since a certain date. However, now:
"With the 'new' label in Trackingplan, I can identify what’s new without having to waste time searching through GA4. This gives me visibility on newly created landings, sources, or media driving traffic, and allows me to quickly spot any issues."
In this regard, the system allows for automatic detection of discrepancies across events, pixels, and campaign data, —whether it’s missing data, incorrect tagging, or empty fields–, saving valuable time that would otherwise be spent manually sifting through multiple sources. Furthermore, alerts for newly implemented fields, such as a "discounted price" field in purchase events, enable instant validation of deployments.
“Trackingplan’s alerts let me confirm if expected implementations are working correctly. For example, just a few minutes ago, I was able to verify in real-time that a newly added discounted price field in the purchase event was being received accurately.”
Despite not managing campaigns directly, Trackingplan still plays a crucial role by providing Semmántica with the context they need to quickly identify untagged or incorrectly tagged data despite not being part of the agency's responsibilities. This allows Pablo to proactively flag issues for clients, often uncovering problems they may not even be aware of.
"Even though we don’t manage campaigns directly, Trackingplan helps us identify untagged or empty data. This allows us to proactively alert the client, showing them we’ve uncovered issues they might not even know exist”.
In the same way, Trackingplan keeps Pablo informed about any issues with pixels, allowing him to pinpoint where things are failing, where data isn’t being received, and what new information is coming through.
“These insights help me build rapport with the client, as I can proactively spot issues and flag them before they become problems.”
Moreover, as Pablo described, this visibility into campaigns and sources is incredibly useful, as it allows him to quickly link traffic spikes or other anomalies to a campaign the client has recently launched, even without having access to the client’s marketing plan or campaign schedule.
By centralizing their clients' analytics setup, Semmántica’s team gained a clear, real-time overview of their data, simplifying the management of integrations across platforms.
For it, Trackingplan’s Health Summary allows Pablo to quickly assess the overall state of the client’s analytics. If an issue arises, he can immediately pinpoint the exact event, URL, or pixel affected and dive deeper into the investigation, allowing him to work in reverse—first spotting potential errors and then deciding where to focus his time, rather than blindly looking for issues across multiple tools.
“Now I start my day by checking my clients’ Health Summary. If I see an error, I instantly know where to investigate it in GA4, GTM, etc. Instead of manually searching for issues across tools, I get a clear starting point.”
Moreover, beyond Trackingplan’s Health Summary, the ability to compare daily vs. weekly metrics and track starred items (such as key events like purchase or add_to_cart) makes it easier for him to monitor fluctuations.
“Instead of jumping between platforms daily, I go straight to Trackingplan, get a quick overview, and only dive into GA4 or GTM when necessary.”
By consolidating their workflow, Semmántica’s team reduced the time spent on routine checks while ensuring their tracking remains accurate and actionable.
By integrating Trackingplan, Pablo and the analytics team at Semmántica achieved significant improvements in data quality and operational efficiency. Within just a few months, this is how Trackingplan has tangibly improved data quality and efficiency:
Trackingplan has become an essential tool for Semmántica, allowing them to deliver high-quality analytics services with greater efficiency. By automating error detection and providing real-time insights, it has not only streamlined its workflows but also reinforced its reputation as a trusted analytics partner.
For agencies like Semmántica, where data accuracy is key to proving ROI, Trackingplan bridges the gap between analysts and developers—ensuring clean, reliable data and strengthening client relationships.
Semmántica is a leading agency specializing in Digital Advertising (SEM) and Analytics. They manage campaigns across Google Ads, social media platforms, programmatic advertising, and other digital marketing channels. In addition, they are experts in digital analytics, covering everything from data analysis and CRO to visualization and reporting.
Semmántica has renewed yearly its Google Premier Partner certification, the highest one agencies can get granted from Google Ads. Moreover, they are also part of the exclusive Google International Agency Growth Program, a global selection of top-performing agencies. Additionally, they hold Meta Business Partner and TikTok Strategic Partner (Silver Level) certifications.
Their client portfolio includes renowned brands such as Desigual, Mayoral, Codorníu, Universidad de Deusto, and the Barcelona City Council.
For agencies managing complex analytics setups, Trackingplan offers a powerful solution to simplify workflows, reduce manual effort, and enhance data quality. As Semmántica’s experience shows, the right tools don’t just optimize processes—they empower teams to deliver exceptional results.
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