Happy Trails Google Analytics. Hello GA4!?!

Conversion Modelling may save your digital sales in this new G4 Cookieless world.

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Yes, that’s right. On March 16th, 2022, Google announced that it’s relatively brand new Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is the new default standard (choosing to sunset Google’s Universal Analytics). So UA is going bye-bye for good as of summer 2023. So after an uncomfortable silence, you might be thinking, “How am I going to track my conversions without Universal Analytics? How can I track sales and conversion in a world without cookies?”.

Meaningful conversions and ad interaction tracking are fundamental for marketers to measure their return on investment. However, as the digital world matures and privacy becomes increasingly important for users, fundament changes were needed to balance privacy and ad relevance.

The days of the simple installation of tracking cookies are over. Despite the success of cookies, it was clear to many that tracking technologies’ ability to gather personal data was too intrusive. Google’s response, GA 4. A new and unique way to leverage big data to predict granular insights and audience behaviour.

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GA4’s new Conversion modelling system uses machine learning & big data to infer audience behaviour when it is impossible to measure individual user actions. Google says they are committed to “helping advertisers make sense of complex data sets with privacy-first modelling solutions.” Apple Inc. iOS 14 privacy update was the catalys for companies like Google & Facebook to find alternative solutions to Universal Analytics and Facebooks Pixel’s cookie based technology.

How does Conversion Modeling in GA4 Work?

According to Google, “models look for trends between conversions that were directly observed and those that weren’t. For example, if conversions attributed on one browser are similar to unattributed conversions from another browser, the machine learning model will predict overall attribution. Based on this prediction, conversions are then aggregated to include both modelled and observed conversions”.

Events – Get the Spotlight in GA4

Events in GA4 are essentially what Universal analytics dubbed “dimensions”. Instead, adding a dimension to a data set, now, you can literally create events for anything (behaviour/interaction or KPI), providing marketers with a ton of new insights.

Accurate and privacy-safe conversion modelling has become the new guideline for Google’s tracking policy. This is based on Google’s expertise in machine learning as its system tests and validates the use of aggregated data to preserve consumer privacy. In addition, Google’s policy strictly forbids heuristics such as IP addresses to identify and track individual users.

Google states,” With modelling integrated directly into your campaigns reports, you can seamlessly access a combined and standardized set of both observed and modelled conversion data”.

GA4 is READY TO ROLL!

A few parting thoughts. Google Analytics 4 is here and READY TO ROLL! While Universal Analytics is set to be discontinued in the summer of 2023. Don’t delay on this one, start the transition to GA4 today. The new Analytics is a more sophisticated tool that needs time to ingest and process historical data. The longer you wait, the less accurate your data will be when you need it most.

Analytics is not everybody’s cup of tea – But it is critical. So if you need a helping hand or want to talk it through with an expert, Call us!

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Scott-Web

Scott Maloley – President at Digital Clicks Marketing

Scott is a business owner and entrepreneur very familiar with the daily grind of running a business. He founded Digital Clicks Marketing 11 years ago to ease the marketing burden for businesses without internal resources or in-house expertise. He makes sure businesses and brands deploy the right digital marketing strategies and tactics to help them excel online.