Analytics Updates

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.

GA4 adds custom event data imports

GA4 now supports custom event data imports. This will allow users to combine event-scoped custom dimensions and standard fields to join and analyse imported events with your existing GA4 data. Once imported and combined, you can create custom reports to provide a more comprehensive view of both datasets.

GA4 updates attribution models to improve accuracy of paid search campaign measurement

GA4 is rolling out some changes to its attribution models over the next couple of weeks. This update aims to improve how conversions are credited to paid search campaigns, ensuring greater accuracy when measuring the results of your ads.

Some conversions in the current attribution models are mistakenly attributed to organic search, particularly for single-page applications. This occurs when the ‘gclid’ parameter, doesn’t carry over between page views as a user moves throughout your website.

The update will ensure that campaign data is captured accurately during the first event on each new page. If a user leaves your website and returns through a different channel, the attribution will be adjusted to give credit to the correct channels.

The update could lead to an increase in conversions attributed to paid search campaigns, and therefore a decrease in organic conversions. It’s something to keep an eye on over the coming weeks. Google advises that this could potentially impact your spending on Google Ads campaigns. Before the update takes effect, review your budget caps and make any necessary adjustments.

GA4 adds feature to send reports via email instantly

Administrators in GA4 properties can now use the ‘Send Email’ feature when clicking share report. This allows users to share report data with other people instantly via email. Reports sent via email will feature the date range selected as well as any filters or comparisons added when the report is sent.

GA4 Adds Much Awaited Export To Google Sheets Function

Google has finally launched its ‘export to Google Sheets’ function in GA4 when exporting data from reports. Historically you had to download the file as a CSV and then upload it into Sheets. It’s a small but mighty update for those who use Google Sheets as a part of their daily workflow. To export your data into a Google Sheet, click Share This Report > Download File > Export To Google Sheets. 

360 Customers Gain Control Over Report Sharing with New Access Controls

Analytics 360 Customers using GA4 can now leverage enhanced control over which report collections are available for individual users. This will allow admins to show users only the reports they need to access rather than everything. For example, your product team could have access to your product reports, but your marketing team can still see a more holistic view of all of the key reports.

It’s unknown whether this change will come to all users in the future, but if you need to be able to restrict access based on specific users, Analytics 360 now makes this possible.

GA4 Launches Saved Comparisons

Similar to the segments we had in Universal Analytics, GA4 now has a feature that allows you to add saved comparisons to your GA4 property. This will allow all users with access to the GA4 property to compare the same segments of data without having to manually set them up each time.

Google has included some built-in segments to get you started including All Users, Direct Traffic, Organic Traffic, Paid Traffic, Referral and Affiliates Traffic, Mobile Traffic, Web Traffic and more.

It will allow users to get to the data they need more efficiently across any of the library reports within GA4.

Improved Imported User Data & GA4 Audience Matches

Google has released a GA4 update that improves how imported user data is fed into GA4 audiences. When data is now imported and connected to GA4 data using either the client Id or user Id, the data is immediately available for use in GA4 audiences when the specific audience criteria are met. You’ll no longer have to wait for the user to become active on the website or app again as no further activity will be needed to trigger the audience criteria.

GA4 “Key Event” Update Initially Perplexes Advertisers – March 2024

Google announced a push for “greater consistency” with Google Ads, with an impending GA4 update that replaces ‘conversions’ with ‘key events’.

Most advertisers and GA4 users are used to using the same terminology as Google Ads (“conversion”), making the insistence from Kamal Janardhan, Google’s Senior Director of Product Management, that this is an “improved, more unified experience” a bit confusing.

How this will impact advertisers predominantly using GA4 goal tracking remains to be seen, but in the meantime, this could be a key step in differentiating Analytics and Ad platforms more definitively for the industry: Google Ads is a platform for performance and optimisation (conversion), whereas Analytics is arguably for reporting and measuring user behaviour (key events).

A minor difference, but an important one to keep in mind.

Google Analytics 4 Officially Replaces Universal Analytics

The forced migration away from the long-serving Universal Analytics (UA) to Google’s newest analytical platform Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is a historic transitional moment in digital marketing. Advertisers now have no choice if they were previously using UA but to use GA4 if they to track the performance of their websites as UA officially stops processing website visitors as of today. It is now imperative for any advertisers to migrate from UA to GA4 in order to stop any potential data loss.

First-Click, Time Decay and Position-based Attribution Models Are Being Removed

First-Click, Time Decay and Position-Based attribution models will no longer be available within Google Ads, in favour of the Data-Driven attribution model by September 2023.

As per their strong focus on Performance Max, Google has increasingly catered to the variety and number of touch-points prior to a conversion (shorthandly referred to as “The Messy Middle”). Data-driven attribution has been found to improve performance when used in combination with Smart Bidding, however for years, Data-Driven was only available to accounts that had thousands of conversions a month, making it inaccessible for many.

Now that Data-Driven attribution’s requirements are lower, more advertisers can leverage Smart Bidding and enter “The Messy Middle” for themselves.

These days only 3% of web conversion actions use First-Click, Time Decay or Position-Based attribution, and with Data-Driven now being the gold standard, it is no surprise Google has decided to move away from these outdated models completely.

Advertisers not using Data-Driven or Last Click will be automatically switched by the end of September 2023.

Google Says “Farewell” to Optimize & Optimize 360

Google is saying goodbye and sunsetting Google Optimize and Optimize 360, with both no longer being available after September 30, 2023.

In a rare consolidation, Google is pushing for advertisers to treat GA4 as the main platform for third-party A/B testing integrations, stating that integrating GA4 will “improve user experience”. While accurate tracking will likely remain a pain point for advertisers in 2023, it is more vital than ever that advertisers will need to be familiarising themselves with GA4 and its tools available, as it is clear Google will undoubtedley be focusing on adding more to GA4 further in the future.

‘Similar Audiences’ Targeting in Google Ads Will Be Replaced with a Not-So-Similar Feature

Starting in May 2023, Google will be transitioning away from Similar Audiences, with these fully removed from all ad groups and campaign by August 2023.

Similar Audiences have been a long-term mainstay of Google targeting, making the update a frustrating one for many advertisers who rely on these audiences to find “lookalikes” of their ideal users.

The feature is to be rolled up and consolidated into the already available Optimised Targeting (display, video and discovery campaigns) and Audience Expansion, however once removed, there will be no way to target ONLY Similar Audiences, unless the feature is replaced before Aug 23. Advertisers using Similar Audiences should look to test optimised targeting and begin to move away from similar audiences, so the transition will be less impactful in August.