This is an article “What You Need To Know About Google Analytics v4.0” by Marc Primo
Most marketers have long relied on the valuable metrics that Google Analytics can offer. However, those behind the platform's many releases may find it difficult to implement their digital marketing strategies. With the release of the new Google Analytics v4.0 or GA4, no marketer can risk being unfamiliar with the latest features and upgrades in user information analysis that can take the online marketing competition to a whole new level.
The latest update has it all – from new functions on reporting essential enhancements to intuitive insights that can all help improve the way you communicate with your target market. Adding GA4 to your current setup will make it easier to gather, sort, and review your site's most important data.
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What's hot about GA4?
What marketers previously called App+Web, GA4 upgrades Google's universal analytics set up in the closest way possible to achieving a customer-business win-win situation. While the new upgrade focuses more on giving higher importance to user privacy, marketers can also benefit from the new release as it can now track both website and application events and parameters.
Of course, the need for the Google upgrade was born from the new privacy laws now implemented by regulating bodies such as Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). The most significant shift that marketers had to make was to go from collecting data from third parties and taking new approaches to privacy-first tracking, cross-channel data measurement, and AI-powered predictive analysis.
The privacy-first tracking feature phases out third-party cookies without replacing them with alternative user-level identifiers. Instead, the platform will utilize more privacy-centered technologies such as Chrome's FLoC-based features, which can hide users among larger audiences with similar interests. That means the platform will still include users in the ad selection process without letting them share their browser information.
Cross-channel data-driven attribution allows marketers to review and optimize their spending in the different channels they utilize via machine learning. By determining which touchpoints perform better and which ones don't based on an account's historical data, advertisers can adjust their ad spend upon a thorough review of its attribution features. It's a bread trail of users' activities comprising ads, clicks, and other metrics that lead them to convert. At the same time, the platform automatically adjusts each time there's an event change on your touchpoint categories to make your next move more proactive.
AI-powered intuitive analysis
Another feature to be excited about in the new GA4 is its ability to provide more valuable insights via AI-powered predictive analysis. With the new features, marketers can rely on more refined information about user behavior with the addition of user trends alerts. Aside from being able to foreshadow such facets as revenue potential or churn rates, GA4's intuitive algorithms can prepare for data-driven actions that anticipate their customers' next moves. It's a helpful tool for businesses that want to gain more insights into how they can increase productivity in both their sales and revenue campaigns.
Aside from this, the new predictive analysis update will allow advertisers to sort out their leads via site and app visits. GA4 automatically updates the list of users engaging via the website; before removing them from its audience list once they have made purchases via the app. This process spares users more unintentional spammy ads or content that could turn them off from the brand.
New engagement metrics from GA4
Since the bounce rate metric is gone from the new update, marketers should focus more on the platform's current engagement metrics.
Engagement Rate is a new metric that allows marketers to determine the level of interaction users spend on their websites and apps. By providing valuable session data on visitor frequency and time spent, marketers can weed out potential leads from those that are unlikely to convert. A 10-second session on your website or mobile app, two or more screen or page views, and each conversion equals one engagement.
Aside from Engagement Rate, GA4 also introduces Engagement Sessions (how many times a user engaged with your website or mobile app); Engagement Rate (the total number of engagement sessions); Engaged Sessions Per User (the number of both sessions and total users who visited your site and apps); and Engagement Time (how long they stayed per engagement session).
To find these engagement metrics within the new GA4 interface, go to 'Acquisition' under the 'Reports' tab on the left menu column, and click on 'View User Acquisition.' You can then check out your engagement rate and other relevant metrics to derive valuable insights.
What benefits can you get from GA4's new features?
Aside from making it easier for marketers to track user behavior across different channels, these new updates can deliver a clearer end-to-end and web-to-app perspective of every customer journey. Using the new features, you can improve each segment of your marketing funnel and per user ID script, which will be logged on the platform each time a user visits your site or app. Not that you can picture how each user engages with your website or your apps, you can offer better user experiences by creating more accurate buyer personal models.
GA4 also broadens the scope of measuring website and mobile app events. The new update now provides marketers a macro perspective and a more in-depth view of user interactions and engagements per event without taking away session-level metrics.
And since the new GA4 utilizes a more AI-powered predictive analysis, marketers can easily create retargeting campaigns based on conversion or attrition probabilities and more realistic revenue goals. Combining these new metrics, which now measure site and app events plus engagement rates, can add more significant targeting results on ad campaigns and social media.
Indeed, you can do more with those metrics than the ones you get from the previous universal Google Analytics model that only focused on page views and other key metrics on your website. Most of all, your target audience will love you for how you respect their privacy issues.