— Vidhya Srinivasan, VP/GM Buying, Analytics and Measurement, Google Ads
But for those reading who haven’t yet added GA4 to their website, the time to do so is now. (And yes…Tinuiti can help!)
— Tom Clinton, Director of Engineering & Web Analytics at Tinuiti
Knowing that UA deprecation was eventual given the launch of GA4, many brands and businesses have already added GA4 to their sites, as a GA4 property can be created without removing Universal Analytics.
Knowing that UA deprecation was eventual given the launch of GA4, many brands and businesses have already added GA4 to their sites, as a GA4 property can be created without removing Universal Analytics.
We are equipped to help existing and new clients get GA4 quickly, properly added to their site so they can begin pulling in data. Installing GA4 as soon as possible will give your team more time to familiarize themselves with the platform, and how to most effectively use the data within, while UA is still available. Tinuiti can quickly implement basic tracking for a small fee, as well as customized conversion/goal tracking.
- Provides a unified view between app and web
- Offers an updated user interface with several new reporting tools
- Can run in parallel with Universal Analytics (until UA is sunset)
- Available data in GA4 is forward-facing from the date of installation; the sooner you create a GA4 profile, the more historical data you’ll have available once UA is deprecated. Because GA4 doesn’t backfill historical data (it has no insights into what occurred prior to its installation), if you haven’t set-up GA4 by July 2022, when UA is deprecated in July 2023, you will immediately begin missing out on valuable YoY information
- GA4 data is largely oriented toward better understanding the customer lifecycle, providing information focused on acquisition, engagement, monetization, and retention
In this post, we’ll take a closer look at what GA4 is, how it differs from UA, and why you should consider June 30, 2022 your absolute cutoff date for getting GA4 added to your site.
data-driven attribution, which will be the default in GA4.
“Conversion modeling powered by machine learning allows you to preserve measurement even when cookies or other identifiers aren’t present. Data-driven attribution in Google Ads takes this a step further. It uses advanced machine learning to more accurately understand how each marketing touchpoint contributed to a conversion, all while respecting user privacy.”
“Conversion modeling powered by machine learning allows you to preserve measurement even when cookies or other identifiers aren’t present. Data-driven attribution in Google Ads takes this a step further. It uses advanced machine learning to more accurately understand how each marketing touchpoint contributed to a conversion, all while respecting user privacy.”
Want to learn more about GA4, and how Tinuiti’s Analytics experts can get your site properly set-up for future measurement success? Reach out today!
Ready to add GA4 to your site, but don’t have the internal resources or bandwidth to get it set-up? We can help! Our Analytics team understands how important accurate YoY data is when making key business decisions, and building your advertising campaign strategies. In addition to getting GA4 added to your site, we also offer the option for clients to utilize Mobius as a place that can “combine” UA and GA4 data into a single view.
— Tom Clinton, Director of Engineering & Web Analytics at Tinuiti
The last-click attribution model is popular, but flawed; while it does consider which ad effectively ‘closed the deal,’ it doesn’t give any credit to the influence other ads had in the consumer journey that built up to the sale—or the non-ad-specific initiatives aimed at increasing awareness and overall visibility.
Check out our blog post What is Google Analytics 4, and Why Should You Implement it ASAP? for more details about the platform.
Many of our clients rely on Google Analytics data as their source of truth, and we know they aren’t alone. BuiltWith data shows that at least one version of Google Analytics is used by at least ~28 million websites today.
“GA4 is the newest generation of the popular Google Analytics web and app tracking platform that accommodates an increasingly cookieless and privacy-first future.”
Google has officially announced plans to sunset their popular Universal Analytics (UA) platform on July 1, 2023. GA360 properties will be given a three-month extension, and will stop processing hits on October 1, 2023. The previously processed data within your Universal Analytics properties will be accessible for at least six months; Google plans to “provide a future date for when Universal Analytics properties will no longer be available” in coming months. The successor to Universal Analytics, pre-released as App + Web beta, was fully released as Google Analytics 4 (GA4) in October 2020.
Preparing for the deprecation of UA by installing GA4 today is made even more important by how many brands—and by extension, advertisers—rely on that data in making very impactful choices. Having reliable, apples-to-apples, year-over-year data is crucial in making key business decisions, understanding how your site is performing, and knowing what to advertise, and how effective that advertising is.
