Tag Archives: Analytics

Upcoming changes to Google Analytics audiences and conversions in Google Ads

What's changing

Starting in April 2023, Google Analytics 4 (GA4) will automatically set up a basic GA4 property linked to your Google Ads account if the Google Ads account still uses Universal Analyticsconversions and/or audiences.

During this process, GA4 will configure corresponding conversions and/or audiences in GA4 and apply them in your Google Ads account. This will happen even if you already have a GA4 property but still use Universal Analytics conversions and/or audiences in Google Ads.

Options for handling these changes

The configuration created by GA4 may not be set up to meet your specific business goals or capture all the historical data you need, so we recommend you start manually moving your conversions and/or audiences to GA4 now.

If you don’t want the GA4 Setup Assistant to make these changes, you may opt out by the end of April.

If you don’t want an automatically set up GA4 property at all, you can also opt out of the entire process.

What you should know

Universal Analytics standard properties will stop processing new data from July 1, 2023 onwards. GA4, our next-generation measurement solution, will become the sole Google Analytics standard property type.

This impacts Universal Analytics conversions, audiences, and site stats currently used in your Google Ads campaigns. We recommend that you switch to GA4 now to ensure your campaigns and ad groups are effectively moved to GA4 conversions, site stats, and audiences. If you’re unsure whether a GA4 property has been created, please contact the admin user for your Universal Analytics property in Google Analytics to verify.

Resources to help you migrate to Google Analytics 4

For an overview of functionality and features in UA and GA4, including APIs, check out the Universal Analytics to GA4 migration reference.

For API integrations:

  • If you previously used the Google Analytics Management API v3 to manage your Universal Analytics properties, migrate to the Admin API v1.
  • If you previously used the Google Analytics Reporting API v4 to run reports in your Universal Analytics properties, migrate to the Data API v1.

How to get help


- Josh Radcliff, Google Analytics and Google Ads API Team

Turn insights into ROI with Google Analytics

Three years ago, we introduced Google Analytics 4, a re-imagined tool that helps you get a complete view of consumer behavior across web and app by using first-party, modeled data. This is critical in an evolving privacy and technology landscape, where marketers have to rethink their approach to measurement in order to keep getting the insights they rely on. Today we’re introducing new resources to help you make the switch to Google Analytics 4, improved machine learning features, actionable reporting and new integrations.

Make the switch now to Google Analytics 4 with helpful solutions

Earlier this year we shared that we will begin sunsetting standard Universal Analytics properties on July 1, 2023. We recognize that setting up Google Analytics 4 to fit your needs takes time and resources, in particular for large enterprises with complex Analytics 360 setups. To allow enterprise customers more time to have a smoother transition to Google Analytics 4, we’re moving the Universal Analytics 360 properties’ sunset date from October 1, 2023 to July 1, 2024. We're focusing our efforts and investments on Google Analytics 4 to deliver a solution built to adapt to a changing ecosystem. Because of this, throughout 2023 we'll be shifting support away from Universal Analytics 360 and will move our full focus to Google Analytics 4 in 2024. As a result, performance will likely degrade in Universal Analytics 360 up until the new sunset date.

To help everyone make the move, we're launching new resources and tools to help you get started with Google Analytics 4. Our step by step guide helps you complete the entire setup of Google Analytics 4 at your pace and customize it to your needs. Or, if you prefer a more automated experience, you can use the Setup Assistant in the admin section of your Universal Analytics property. Once a Google Analytics 4 property is created and connected, the Setup Assistant can automate some required setup steps and help you track your progress. For example, the Setup Assistant lets you select the goals you want to import to Google Analytics 4, copy desired Google Ads links and audiences, and add users who have access to your current property.

Screenshot of the Setup Assistant showing the tools to configure data collection and property settings for a new Google Analytics 4 property

The Setup Assistant tools

The best Google Analytics 4 setup comes from following the steps above to create a customized property tailored to your needs. The earlier you do this, the more historical data and insights you will have in Google Analytics 4. For example, SunCorp, one of Australia's largest financial services brands, prioritized setting up Google Analytics 4 to build a base of historical insights.

When Universal Analytics stops collecting data in 2023, we will have over two years of insights and reporting in Google Analytics 4. This is critical for a business like us to ensure we have a robust foundation of data to inform decision making. Mim Haysom
Chief Marketing Officer, Suncorp Group

Beginning in early 2023, the Setup Assistant will also create a new Google Analytics 4 property for each standard Universal Analytics property that doesn’t already have one — helping you jumpstart your migration. These new Google Analytics 4 properties will be connected with the corresponding Universal Analytics properties to match your privacy and collection settings. They’ll also enable equivalent basic features such as goals and Google Ads links. If you’d rather begin the switch on your own, you can opt out of having the Setup Assistant do it for you.

Get accurate insights with new machine learning solutions

Behavioral modeling uses machine learning to fill gaps in your understanding of customer behavior when cookies and other identifiers aren’t available. Soon, behavioral modeling will also be available in the real time reporting, giving you a complete view of the consumer journey as it happens. It’s helping marketers like Nestlé get accurate insights from more customer activity.

Behavioral modeling with Consent Mode in Google Analytics 4 drove a 23% increase in the observable traffic in analytics reporting on European and UK websites. Jaime Rodera
Privacy & Consumer Data Manager, Nestlé

Improve ROI with new actionable reporting and integrations

To get a more accurate picture of your campaigns across all of your marketing touchpoints, we will soon introduce custom channel grouping in Google Analytics 4 to help you see the performance of different channels aggregated. For example, you’ll be able to compare the performance of your paid search brand with your non-brand campaigns. These custom channel groupings work in reporting retroactively, and across the advertising and explore workspaces.

Your insights are only as good as the actions you can take from them. On top of Google Ads, Display & Video 360 and Search Ads 360, we will soon launch an integration with Campaign Manager 360 via Floodlight. This will allow marketers to bid towards Google Analytics 4 conversions in Display & Video 360’s automated bid strategies.

Now is the time to make Google Analytics 4 your cross-platform Analytics solution. Get started with Google Analytics 4 now, complete the setup by following our step by step guide and learn how to get the most out of it with the refreshed Google Analytics 4 certification.

Prepare for the future with Google Analytics 4

In today's measurement landscape, businesses need to navigate new challenges to understand the complex, multi-platform journeys of their customers — all while prioritizing user privacy.

Two and a half years ago, we introduced Google Analytics 4 to address these evolving measurement standards and help businesses succeed. Google Analytics 4 has the flexibility to measure many different kinds of data, delivering a strong analytics experience that’s designed for the future. It allows businesses to see unified user journeys across their websites and apps, use Google’s machine learning technology to surface and predict new insights, and most importantly, it’s built to keep up with a changing ecosystem.

Without a modern measurement solution, you leave essential insights on the table that can impact your business. So now is the time to make Google Analytics 4 your cross-platform Analytics solution. We will begin sunsetting Universal Analytics — the previous generation of Analytics — next year. All standard Universal Analytics properties will stop processing new hits on July 1, 2023. Given the new Analytics 360 experience was recently introduced, Universal Analytics 360 properties will receive an additional three months of new hit processing, ending on October 1, 2023.

Moving on from Universal Analytics

Universal Analytics was built for a generation of online measurement that was anchored in the desktop web, independent sessions and more easily observable data from cookies. This measurement methodology is quickly becoming obsolete. Meanwhile, Google Analytics 4 operates across platforms, does not rely exclusively on cookies and uses an event-based data model to deliver user-centric measurement.

And though Universal Analytics offers a variety of privacy controls, Google Analytics 4 is designed with privacy at its core to provide a better experience for both our customers and their users. It helps businesses meet evolving needs and user expectations, with more comprehensive and granular controls for data collection and usage. Importantly, Google Analytics 4 will also no longer store IP addresses. These solutions and controls are especially necessary in today’s international data privacy landscape, where users are increasingly expecting more privacy protections and control over their data.

Starting your measurement with Google Analytics 4

Google Analytics 4 is designed with your key objectives in mind — like driving sales or app installs, generating leads or connecting online and offline customer engagement.

Here are just a few ways Google Analytics 4 can support your business.

Understand your customers across touchpoints
Get a complete view of the customer lifecycle with an event-based measurement model that isn’t fragmented by platform or organized into independent sessions.

For example, UK-based fitness apparel and accessories brand Gymshark used Google Analytics 4 to measure across its website and app, allowing the Gymshark team to better understand how users moved through the purchase funnel. As a result, they reduced user drop off by 9%, increased product page clickthroughs by 5% and cut down their own time spent on user journey analysis by 30%.

Google Analytics 4 was the perfect choice in understanding and improving our new e-commerce app. Maxwell Petitjean
Head of Product Insights, Gymshark

Improve ROI with data-driven attribution
Use data-driven attribution to analyze the full impact of your marketing across the customer journey. It assigns attribution credit to more than just the last click using your Analytics data, and helps you understand how your marketing activities collectively influence your conversions. You can export that analysis to Google Ads and Google Marketing Platform media tools to optimize campaigns.

Measure engagement and conversions with business and compliance needs in mind
With new country-level privacy controls, you can manage and minimize the collection of user-level data — like cookies and metadata — while preserving key measurement functionality.

Get greater value from your data
Machine learning generates sophisticated predictive insights about user behavior and conversions, creates new audiences of users likely to purchase or churn and automatically surfaces critical insights to improve your marketing.

Easily activate your insights
Expanded integrations with other Google products, like Google Ads, work across your combined web and app data, making it easy to use Analytics insights to optimize your campaigns.

McDonald’s Hong Kong met its goal to grow mobile orders using a predictive audience of “likely seven-day purchasers” and exporting it to Google Ads — increasing app orders more than six times. The team saw a 2.3 times stronger ROI, a 5.6 times increase in revenue, and a 63% reduction in cost per action.

“Google Analytics 4 has equipped us with a strong measurement foundation. We are able to get valuable insights from our first-party data with machine learning and utilize them in our marketing, driving impressive results to future-proof our business.”
— Tina Chao, McDonald’s Hong Kong Chief Marketing and Digital Customer Experience Officer

And now, Search Ads 360 and Display & Video 360 integrations are available for all customers. This means that any Google Analytics 4 property — standard or 360 — can activate its Analytics data, like conversions and audiences, in Google Marketing Platform buying tools to strengthen campaign performance.

Address your enterprise measurement needs
New sub and roll-up properties in Analytics 360 allow you to customize the structure of your Google Analytics 4 properties to meet data governance needs. This ensures that different teams or partners, like advertising agencies, can access the data they need in accordance with your policies.

Analytics 360 also offers higher limits to meet increasing demand — up to 125 custom dimensions, 400 audiences and 50 conversion types per property. And you’ll have peace of mind with service legal agreements (SLAs) across most core functionality, including data collection, processing, reporting and attribution.

"As a large enterprise business with a wide product portfolio, the new Analytics 360 has unlocked insights for our teams to make data-driven decisions, while providing the ability to meet our complex data governance needs with ease and flexibility.”
— Rashi Kacker, Director of Marketing Technology Innovation, Constellation Brands

What happens next?

All standard Universal Analytics properties will stop processing new hits on July 1, 2023, and 360 Universal Analytics properties will stop processing new hits on October 1, 2023. After that, you’ll be able to access your previously processed data in Universal Analytics for at least six months. Learn more about what to expect.

Make the move over to Google Analytics 4 as soon as possible to build the necessary historical data before Universal Analytics stops processing new hits. For guidance, check out our Help Center resources.

Use these tools to boost Web Stories performance

Once you’ve created content in the form of Web Stories, you’re probably wondering who your Web Stories are reaching and whether they’re resonating with your audience. Google Analytics and Data Studio are easy-to-use tools that help you understand how your Web Stories are performing on your website — or anywhere else on the web.

Viewing Web Stories performance in Google Analytics

The first step to measuring your Web Stories performance with Google Analytics is to set up tracking. Most Web Story editors, including Web Stories for WordPress, MakeStories, Newsroom AI and others, provide a simple way to add tracking in Google Analytics for each story created. You’ll need to provide the UA Tracking ID associated with the Google Analytics property you’re using for Web Stories.

Once your Stories are being tracked, key performance metrics will become available via the Events report in Google Analytics. This report is accessible by navigating to Behavior > Events > Overview in the navigation bar. The metrics available include:

  • Story Starts: A measure of how many users started reading your Story. These are reported as pageviews in Google Analytics.
  • Time Spent: A measure of how long users spend reading your Story, on average. This metric is helpful when determining how engaging your story is. This is reported as Avg. Time on Page in Google Analytics.
  • Story Pages Viewed: A measure of how many users read each page in your Story. This can be a helpful indicator to determine how far users get into your Story and where they might lose interest. These are reported as story_pages_viewed events in Google Analytics, and can be found in the Events Report.
  • Story Completions: A measure of how many users completed your Story by reaching the last page. These are reported as story_completion events in Google Analytics.
A detailed screenshot of a Google Analytics report focused on Event Action metrics.

The Events Overview report in Google Analytics will report the story title under Event Category. You can click into each of your Stories listed to view data for each of the metrics above by selecting Event Action as the primary dimension.

Even simpler access to Web Story performance insights with Data Studio

A screenshot of the Web Stories Insights dashboard displays a blue and yellow line graph charting Story Starts and Story Completions, charts showing audience demographic and other metrics.

The Web Stories Insights dashboard template in Data Studio provides an overview of your Web Stories’ performance by pulling data from Google Analytics into a simple and visually engaging report. The dashboard displays several essential metrics to consider when evaluating performance, including:

  • Key Metrics: Story Starts, Page Views, Time Spent and Completion Rate
  • Audience Metrics: Age, Gender and Device breakdown across all stories published
  • Top Stories: Your top 10 stories during the selected time period, sorted by Story Starts
  • Traffic Channels: An overview of where users are finding and reading your Web Stories
  • Story Level Performance: Key metrics and a breakdown of pageviews for a specific story are available on the ‘Story Level’ page.

Anyone can access the dashboard by visiting goo.gle/web-stories-insights and selecting your Google Analytics account via the Click to Select your Data dropdown. Note you'll only have access to analytics that your Google account is linked to, so be sure to verify which account you’re using. You can also create a copy of the template and adjust it according to your specific analytics needs.

We hope that Google Analytics and Data Studio will help you improve your Web Stories for your audience.

It’s time for a new EU-US data transfer framework

If you rely on an open, global internet, you’ll want the European Union and the U.S. government to agree soon on a new data framework to keep the services you use up and running. People increasingly rely on data flows for everything from online shopping, travel, and shipping, to office collaboration, customer management, and security operations. The ability to share information underpins global economies and powers a range of services like high-value manufacturing, media, and information services. And over the next decade, these services will contribute hundreds of billion euros to Europe’s economy alone.

But those data flows, that convenience, and those economic benefits are more and more at risk. Last week, Austria’s data protection authority ruled that a local web publisher’s implementation of Google Analytics did not provide an adequate level of protection, on the grounds that U.S. national security agencies have a theoretical ability to access user data. But Google has offered Analytics-related services to global businesses for more than 15 years and in all that time has never once received the type of demand the DPA speculated about. And we don't expect to receive one because such a demand would be unlikely to fall within the narrow scope of the relevant law.

The European Court of Justice’s July 2020 ruling did not impose an inflexible standard under which the mere possibility of exposure of data to another government required stopping the global movement of data. We are convinced that the extensive supplementary measures we offer to our customers ensure the practical and effective protection of data to any reasonable standard.

While this decision directly affects only one particular publisher and its specific circumstances, it may portend broader challenges. If a theoretical risk of data access were enough to block data flows, that would pose a risk for many publishers and small businesses who use the web, andhighlight the lack of legal stability for international data flows facing the entire European and American business ecosystem.

In 15 years of offering Analytics services, Google has never received the type of demand...speculated about Kent Walker

Businesses in both Europe and the U.S. are looking to the European Commission and the U.S. Department of Commerce to quickly finalize a successor agreement to the Privacy Shield that will resolve these issues. Both companies and civil society have been supporting reforms based on an evidence-based approach. The stakes are too high — and international trade between Europe and the U.S. too important to the livelihoods of millions of people — to fail at finding a prompt solution to this imminent problem.

A durable framework — one that provides stability for companies offering valuable services in Europe — will help everyone, at a critical moment for our economies. A new framework will bolster the transatlantic relationship, ensure the stability of transatlantic commerce, help businesses of all sizes to participate in the global digital economy, and avoid potentially serious disruptions of supply chains and transatlantic trade. And it will assure continued protection of people’s right to privacy on both sides of the Atlantic.

We strongly support an accord, and have for many years supported reasonable rules governing government access to user data. We have long advocated for government transparency, lawful processes, and surveillance reform. We were the first major company to create a Transparency Report on government requests for user data, were founding members of the Global Network Initiative and the Reform Government Surveillance coalition, and support the OECD’s workstream on government access to data. At this juncture, we urge both governments to take a flexible and aligned approach to resolving this important issue.

As the governments finalize an agreement, we remain committed to upholding the highest standards of data protection in all our products, and are focused on meeting the needs of our customers as we wait for a revised agreement. But we urge quick action to restore a practical framework that both protects privacy and promotes prosperity.

Introducing the new Analytics 360

Earlier this week, we announced that the new Google Analytics is ready to help you meet the challenges of an evolving measurement landscape and get better ROI from your marketing for the long term — with privacy-safe solutions and machine learning at its core. Today, we’re introducing the new Analytics 360, which builds on the foundation of Google Analytics 4 properties to address the measurement needs of large advertisers and agencies with more customizations, increased scale, and enterprise-level support.

Flexible tools to fit your organization’s needs

As a large company, you may have multiple teams that need access to different insights, depending on their job function, products and markets. Let’s say your teams in the United States, Canada and Mexico need to view the data about your four product lines to understand what’s driving sales in their markets. With the new Analytics 360, you can create four product line sub-properties for each country team and customize their settings. For example, you can link each of them with your Google Ads and Google Marketing Platform accounts that are used for the campaigns running in these countries.

You may also have analyst teams in each of those countries that need to access the data across all product lines for their markets to understand what’s driving sales for your brand locally. You can easily do that by creating dedicated roll-up properties for the United States, Canada and Mexico across all four product lines. That way, they’ll be able to better understand the audiences that are interested in your products and share insights with other local teams. Roll-up and sub-properties will only be available in Analytics 360 and will launch in the coming months.

You’ll also be able to create your own user roles in Analytics 360 to control feature access for certain groups of users. For instance, you could create a role for an agency partner so they can understand which campaigns are driving conversions on your website, but can’t access data about your revenue or organic traffic. Custom user roles can also be assigned to selected reporting collections, which are groups of reports based on topics like customer acquisition. This way your teams and partners can access the data they need in compliance with your policies. Custom user roles and user assigned reporting collections will launch in the coming months to all Analytics 360 accounts.

Scalable solutions for growing enterprises

The new Analytics 360 can scale as you grow your business and your needs become more demanding. It has higher limits for up to 125 custom dimensions, 400 audiences and 50 conversion types. If you want to run your own analysis, Analytics 360 allows you to export billions of daily events to BigQuery. You can also get more granular insights by accessing unsampled results directly in Analytics 360’s explore module.

In addition to higher limits, you’ll get continuous intraday data via Analytics 360’s interface and the API. Data usually appears within an hour after collection, so you can make faster, near-real time decisions during crucial periods for your business, like Black Friday.

Enterprise-level performance and support

Analytics 360 comes with service legal agreements (SLAs) across many product functionalities such as data collection, reporting, processing and attribution. For the first time, we’ll introduce an SLA for BigQuery daily export to give you peace of mind even for your own analysis.

When multiple teams work together with Analytics 360, you’d like to closely monitor the changes made to your account settings. The new Analytics 360 has a more robust Change History so you can review when settings are edited, like when a new Google Ads account is linked to an Analytics 360 property or a new type of conversion is created. In the future, we’re planning to add more advanced audit functionalities for a better view of who has access to your data and the changes made to your property.

The new Analytics 360 is now in open beta for all existing clients. Follow these instructions to upgrade your Google Analytics 4 Properties to the Analytics 360 beta.