Analytics

GA4 reduces required parameters needed for cost import data

Google has launched an update for GA4, reducing the required fields needed to import external cost data into the platform.

Moving forward you will only need the following fields:

• Source
• Medium
• Date

Historically, you also needed to import campaign_name and campaign_id, and where this data is available, Google recommends importing them as key fields as they will assist in more granular reporting from within GA4. When cost data is imported without them, GA4 will report in aggregate for those dimensions if requested.

Google opens up media mix modelling with Meridian Launch

This week, Google launched its open-source media mix model tool, Meridian, to everyone.

Meridian uses advanced modelling to help optimise your ad budget insights and make spending more efficient. The ability to plug in Google Ads data and other data sources using Bayesian causal inference methods will help marketers better understand how their campaigns impact the performance of all channels.

Historically, media mix models (MMMs) have often focused primarily on offline advertising and missed the curve on more advanced online strategies. Meridian has been designed to fix that issue and offer a more comprehensive way to measure marketing success in the long term. It combines online and offline data, such as how a TV ad has or could impact your online campaigns.

MMMs also help marketers move beyond traditional conversion metrics in reporting to measuring the impact campaigns can have on an overall business.

One of the key features of Meridian is being open source, and that means marketers can take the code as it is and, if needed, customise it to better meet their individual needs. For example, if you’re working on a client which you know has seasonal trends which differ from the average market ups and downs, you can bring that data into the mix to increase the accuracy of the model. Being built by Google also means it has native connections to all of the data from its platforms that you would expect.

MMMs are not new, but this is a significant step towards the future of campaign measurement and also a vital one when you consider the impact privacy laws and cookie restrictions have had on traditional analytics tools over the past few years.

We spoke to the Founder and CEO of the marketing analytics agency ELIYA, Saeed Omidi about his thoughts on Google’s new update:

Expert opinion

Saeed Omidi, Founder and CEO of ELIYA

"Google introduced Meridian as an enhancement to its open-source MMM model, LightweightMMM. Both Meridian and LightweightMMM are based on a similar Bayesian regression model that integrates media channels, seasonal trends, and various external factors. Being a Bayesian model, Meridian allows for calibration through prior distributions, which is particularly beneficial for integrating experimental outcomes like incrementality testing. Moreover, Meridian can leverage reach and frequency data rather than just impressions, enabling it to capture the media impact accurately. This capability is especially important when individuals may be exposed multiple times, with differing effects based on frequency. Meridian is developed using Google's TensorFlow Probability, which provides a way to accelerate the model's execution on GPU hardware. While this is advantageous for processing numerous models simultaneously, it may be excessive for a business with a single MMM and could incur additional costs. Additionally, Google has access to highly accurate query and keyword data. When applied to Meridian, this data transforms GQV into dependable control variables, thereby improving the measurement quality of the Paid Search channel."

We also spoke to Himanshu Sharma, Founder of Optimize Smart:

Expert opinion

Himanshu Sharma, Founder of Optimize Smart

"Meridian is cool because it takes a lot of the manual work out of marketing mix modeling, making it faster and easier to use. But here is the thing, you can’t just trust it blindly. AI models aren’t perfect, and if your data isn’t solid, you will get junk results. Plus, since it is based on historical trends, it might not handle sudden market changes well. It is a great tool, but it is not a magic bullet. You still need real strategy and common sense to get the best out of it."

GA4 adds ability to copy custom reports across properties

GA4 now has a feature where users can copy custom detail reports or exploration reports from one property to another that you have at least edit access to. This will save users time when they need to view the same reports across different properties for different websites and help avoid configuration differences.

GA4 adds a Consent Settings Hub

Google has added a consent settings hub within GA4 which gives users a more granular overview of their current consent status and setup for both analytics and ad-related cookies. It allows a better understanding of what each consent status means and what impact if could have on your reporting.

Automated first-party mode for Google Tags launches in closed-beta on Cloudflare

In a push to promote website owners to upgrade to first-party tracking setups, which Google recommends as the most durable tagging configuration as it can help improve measurement signals, a closed beta has been launched, allowing automated setup for the solution within Cloudflare.

As testing continues, we can expect this feature to launch fully in the coming months. The automated solution will remove many roadblocks website owners run into when setting up first-party tagging. We expect this in the future to become the new standard for websites that don’t necessarily need a full server-side tracking setup.

We spoke to Dan Truman, Managing Director of Duga Digital about the update. Here are his thoughts:

Expert opinion

Dan Truman, Managing Director of Duga Digital

"Google has introduced the first-party mode beta in GTM, in partnership with Cloudflare, to address the growing need for privacy-centric tracking solutions amidst declining third-party cookies. Cloudflare's extensive reach and therefore the likely high adoption rates make it an ideal partner to ensure this solution is accessible to businesses of all sizes, enabling scalable server-side tracking. This move reflects Google's commitment to balancing data utility with user privacy in an evolving digital landscape by removing implementation barriers for as many websites as possible."

Google launches customer match in beta for GA4

Google has launched Customer Match, a first-party data solution for GA4. This solution enables advertisers to enhance their remarketing campaigns with first-party data instead of relying on cookies alone. Available only with smart campaigns on YouTube, it’ll soon be available for in-feed and search at a later date.

Let’s hear from Dan Truman, Managing Director of Duga Digital, about his thoughts on the customer match update:

Expert opinion

Dan Truman, Managing Director of Duga Digital

"By bringing this beta forward in their roadmap, Google are making their position clear - they want advertisers to work with them, using first party data, and they want to deliver meaningful audiences and value so that customers repeatedly spend their advertising budgets across Google platforms. Customer Match has the potential to fulfil a lot of advertiser demand requirements, but the test will be whether the results are large enough for (or attributed to) Google's platform."

Google Analytics improves cost data import functionality

Google has reduced the friction users experience when importing cost data without all the required dimensions. GA4 now handles imported costs differently and can now report on cost, impressions, and clicks, on any combination of the required dimensions. This update will give users a more comprehensive overview of advertising performance and better data-driven decision-making.

Google enhances conversion linker functionality

The conversion linker is a tag used within Google Tag Manager that helps improve tracking reliability across different browsers. A new update to the tag will allow it to store ad click data within the local browser storage and the first-party cookie it has used historically.

The dual storage functionality will help improve tracking reliability for Google Ad Campaigns.

GA4 launches benchmarking

GA4 has rolled out extensive benchmarking features that will allow users to compare their results against industry standards, compare results against peer groups based on their business, and maintain privacy by only using aggregated data sets. To enable benchmarking in your account and access the reports, you need to go to Admin > Account Settings > Enable Modeling Contributions & Business Insights.

GA4 updates unsampled data request limits for GA360 customers

GA360 users now have a significantly higher token limit when requesting unsampled data from the GA4 platform. Historically, this was as low as 500 tokens per day but has now increased to 20,000 tokens and a per-request limit of 5000 tokens. This will help GA360 users analyse much larger data sets and the amount of exportable data that isn’t limited by sampling.

GA4 increases data export limits

GA4 has launched new increased limits on how much data you can export from GA4 in reports and explorations. The new limits are 10,000,000 cells for unsampled explorations in CSV or TSV formats, and 100,000 rows for reports downloaded as CSV format or imported into Google Sheets.

The new limits are active now and will help users of GA4 more flexibility with what they can do with the data collected in GA4.

GA4 launches data import improvements

Google has added the ability to create and manage multiple data sources for each import type within GA4. This will allow users to handle more complex data scenarios that meet their needs. One of the key features of data imports is that it leaves your existing data as it is now, and any new data is added or updated, meaning a much lower risk of accidental data overwrites.

Expert opinion

Sam Thomas- Analytics consultant at Embryo

"With lower risks to original data when importing from external services, GA4 is opening up the ability for more users to explore ways to connect their data and drill deeper into how their marketing efforts are impacting as a return for their business. It's no longer enough to have a single source of truth for marketing returns, so combining GA4 data with other analytics tools and CRM data allows a fuller picture for businesses to make smarter decisions based on data."

GA4 add plot rows option to line charts

GA4 has launched an update that allows users to plot specific rows of data in the line charts found in reports. Previously it only displayed the top 5 rows or a single row by default. Now users can change the charts to display the exact data they require.

GA4 launches cross-channel budgeting tools for ads spend in closed alpha

Whilst not available to everybody yet, the newly launched budgeting tool is designed to help analyse historical media spend and conversions to help optimise budgets for ad spend. The new budget section can be found under advertising and has insights on budget allocation, spend projections, and ongoing performance tracking across channels. It can help you create manual integrations also so no third-party platform will be left aside.

Currently only available in a closed alpha test, we’re keen to see where Google takes this in the future as it’s a valuable addition to the GA4 platform.

Google announces improvements to key event attribution

Google has announced a change for GA4 which will improve the reliability of channel attribution for key events. The change means that you should more reliably see key events assigned to the correct channels instead of being assigned to the direct channel.

Google drops plans to kill third-party cookies

Google announced its plan to kill third-party cookies from its Chrome browser four years ago. After multiple delays, most of which were caused by regulatory concerns over Google’s replacement, the privacy sandbox, Google has announced it won’t be killing third-party cookies after all.

Instead, Google has said it will offer users a choice on whether they want to accept third-party cookies, and then apply that choice at a browser level and apply it to all websites the user visits. Whether this will keep regulators happy is yet to be seen.

If we consider that 96% of users on iOS deny app tracking when given the choice, it could be said that Google might as well be killing third-party cookies just like Firefox, Safari and Brave browsers already have done.

Google launches ‘first-party mode’ in beta

Google has this week launched its ‘first-party mode’ for tracking tags in beta. First-party mode is designed to remove the reliance on loading resources from Google itself for any Google tags, including Google Tag Manager.

First-party mode means deploying the tags from your own infrastructure hosted on your website domain. In the current widely used setup, Google tags are requested from a Google domain. Now the tags will be requested from your domain, processed on the domain, and then the data forwarded to Google.

It’s designed to help recover lost data because of ad-blockers and other browser restrictions. You’ll need an understanding of your current infrastructure and preferably a CDN like Cloudflare to roll out first-party mode. It’s worth noting of course that you’ll still require consent from your users to track their activity.

Google shuts down Universal Analytics for good

Starting 1st July, Google will be shutting down Universal Analytics for good. Whilst the old UA properties haven’t been processing data for nearly a year, the properties were accessible to those who wanted to look at data in previous years. From today Google will be deleting Univeral Analytics properties and the data will no longer be available either through the web platform or through the API.

Google launches Tag Diagnostics in GA4 & Tag Manager

Google has added a new tool to GA4 and Google Tag Manager called Tag Diagnostics. It’s designed to help you diagnose potential issues with tracking related to the Google Tags or Tag Manager containers you have on your website.

The Tag Diagnostic tool categorises the overall health of your tags as:

• Excellent
• Good
• Needs Attention
• Poor

and some of the issues it can highlight with tags include:

• Additional domains not included in tag configuration
• Config tags not firing before event tags
• The conversion linker tag is missing from the container
• Pages with missing tags
• Consent mode issues (missing or misconfigured consent) for traffic/events coming from EEA & UK visitors

GA4 updates advertising section to include audience data

Google has launched an updated Advertising section within GA4 that adds additional data about the number of users that are eligible for remarketing and ad personalisation. You can find this data under Advertising > Tools > Advertising Segments. The advertising segments audience data is synonymous with audience segments found within the Google Ads Audience Manager.