> I always came with the perspective that your CMS need not and usually should not be responsible for any of that and you can manage all of that in the application tier via a tag manager product or the like
Totally agreed. A CMS should stick to managing content. And its flexibility should allow it to integrate with services that are purpose-built. In addition to those that you mentioned, a good example of this would be Algolia for search experiences.
> "it will require far fewer developer hours to implement" which will resonate a lot more with budget holders.
I also resonate with this, and I think this needs to be worked into our positioning more, because that, at its core, is what Payload tries to do -through- its developer friendliness. When you don't have to fight your software, you save an incredible amount of time. At the core of any larger content infrastructure is code, and the more efficiently you can implement it, let alone maintain it, the more time / money you can save.