Reading list
Hand-picked blogs, courses, tools and communities. No affiliate links, no fluff, only resources I actively use or send to clients.
Practitioner blogs
6Simo Ahava's blog
Deep, technical writeups on GTM, GA4, server-side and the data layer.
The single most cited reference in the GTM community. Pretty much every "how do I track X in GTM" answer eventually links here.
Analytics Mania
Step-by-step GTM and GA4 tutorials for marketers, with paid courses on top.
If Simo is the encyclopedia, Julius is the textbook. Best place to start if you're new to GTM.
KS Digital
Strategic GA4 commentary from a former Google product lead.
Cuts through GA4 release noise to explain what actually matters for analysts and decision-makers.
Charles Farina on LinkedIn
Daily GA4, Google Ads and BigQuery insights from Adswerve's VP.
Probably the highest-signal LinkedIn feed in this space. Short posts, real product changes, no fluff.
Reforge blog
Strategic essays on growth loops, retention and product-market fit.
Where the framework names you keep hearing in growth ("growth loops," "compounding engagement") were coined.
Lenny's Newsletter
Product, growth and career insights with deep operator interviews.
Adjacent to pure analytics but essential context for anyone working with PMs and growth teams.
Courses & certifications
5Google Skillshop
Official certifications: Google Ads, GA4, Analytics, Tag Manager, Data Studio (formerly Looker Studio).
Free, recognized, and goes deep enough to actually be useful (especially the GA4 and Tag Manager paths).
Google Analytics courses (Skillshop)
Beginner to advanced GA4 video courses straight from Google.
The first place to send anyone who has never opened a GA4 property.
Measure School
GTM, GA4, server-side and Data Studio (formerly Looker Studio) courses with a strong YouTube channel.
Best video-first explanation of GTM concepts I've found. The free YouTube channel is enough to get most teams started.
CXL Institute
Mini-degrees on conversion optimization, growth marketing and digital analytics.
The closest thing to a "real" analytics graduate program online. Pricey but the best paid option.
Reforge programs
Cohort-based growth, retention, monetization, and product strategy programs.
For senior practitioners. Cohort discussions are the actual product — the videos alone don't justify the price.
YouTube channels
3Measure School
Weekly GTM and GA4 tutorials, server-side guides, and tool reviews.
Subscribe and you'll passively absorb 80% of GTM best practices over a year.
Analytics Mania
Companion channel to the blog, with the same step-by-step tutorial style.
Watch the GA4 setup playlist before configuring your first property.
Loves Data
GA4 explainers focused on reporting, segments and audiences.
Better than most for the "what does this report actually mean" questions.
Free tools
4GTM Tools (Stape)
Browser extension that decodes any site's GTM container live.
Click on a competitor and see exactly which tags fire on their checkout. Mandatory install.
Tag Assistant Companion
Official Chrome companion for GTM Preview mode debugging.
Required for cross-domain Preview sessions. Install once and forget.
DataLayer Inspector+
Chrome extension that pretty-prints every dataLayer push to the console.
When the built-in Preview UI is overwhelming, this is the cleaner debug view.
OmnibugLite
Inspects analytics network requests across GA, GTM, Adobe, Mixpanel, Segment.
Faster than digging through DevTools Network tab and works across many vendors at once.
Books
3Web Analytics 2.0
The reference text on web analytics thinking — frameworks, KPIs, organizational design.
Written in 2009 but the strategic chapters age remarkably well. Skip the tooling sections.
Hacking Growth
Playbook for setting up a growth team and running experiments at scale.
If you're building a growth function from scratch, read this before anything else.
Lean Analytics
How to pick the One Metric That Matters at each stage of a startup.
The framework for figuring out what to measure when there are too many options.
Newsletters
2Team Simmer
Membership community + premium content from Simo and team.
Worth it if you do GTM/GA4 full-time. The Slack alone has answered support questions for me twice.
MarTech Today
Daily roundup of marketing technology news and product launches.
How you find out about new platform features without scrolling Twitter all day.
Communities
2MeasureCamp
Free unconference series for analytics professionals — happens worldwide several times a year.
The single best place to meet senior analytics practitioners in your region. Look for one in Berlin, London, or Helsinki.
Measure community Slack
Slack workspace with thousands of analytics practitioners. Free signup.
Search the archive before posting — most "GTM weird behavior" questions have already been answered there.
Russian-language resources
4Блог Якова Осипенкова
Russia's most widely-read GA / GTM tutorial blog, with deep how-to articles.
For Russian-speaking analysts: this is the local equivalent of Simo's blog. Hundreds of articles, all free.
IT-tensive — аналитика и Data Science
Russian YouTube channel covering GA4, BigQuery, Python for analytics.
Long-form videos in Russian that go deeper than most KZ/RU YouTube content on the topic.
Web Analyst — Telegram-чат
Active Russian-speaking analytics chat. Honest answers from working analysts.
Best Russian-language place to ask "how do you actually do X in GA4?"
Kaspi Гид для партнёров: магазин на Kaspi.kz
Official Kaspi seller documentation: onboarding, seller cabinet, orders, delivery, quality metrics and the API.
For KZ e-commerce the Kaspi marketplace often outweighs Meta+Google combined. Know how the seller side works before you buy traffic into it.
Read enough. Want it implemented?
These are the sources I actually use. If you'd rather skip to the part where it works in your stack, let's talk.