Four ways Google Analytics delivers actionable insights for your business

Measurement is essential for marketers to understand the impact of their efforts and make more informed decisions. Five years ago, we introduced Google Analytics 4, a solution that adapts to the current digital landscape and allows for growth while respecting users' privacy. Today, we’re highlighting new features and key investment areas to help you make better business decisions. These include AI-generated insights, full-funnel and cross-channel measurement improvements, new budgeting and planning tools, along with privacy-first integrations.

Before we dive in, we’d like to remind you that all these new product launches are available only in Google Analytics 4. As previously announced, Universal Analytics will shut down on July 1, 2024, meaning from this date you won't be able to view or download any current or historical data for standard and 360 properties. Finish upgrading to Google Analytics 4 before July 1, 2024 if you haven't already done so. To maintain access to data from Universal Analytics, you should download your data now.

Faster insights, brought to you

Google Analytics 4 surfaces relevant insights, predicts future consumer behaviors and solves for unknowns in the path to purchase with Google AI. Behavioral and conversion modeling, combined with data-driven attribution, gives you a more comprehensive view of your campaign performance. This remains true even in an evolving regulatory and privacy landscape.

In the coming months we will introduce generated insights to give you clear, concise summaries explaining fluctuations in your data in plain language. Imagine your “Purchase” events spiked on a series of individual dates. Our AI engine works through the countless combinations of dimensions and metrics to proactively connect the dots, explaining why these spikes are happening. These insights will be written in a natural, easy-to-understand way, almost like a colleague summarizing the key takeaways for you.

Better understand performance across the entire funnel and channels

Today’s proliferation of channels, devices and formats present more touch points than ever before. Google Analytics 4 helps you make sense of your consumer journeys across the funnel and your campaign performance across channels. Later this year, Google Analytics 4 will bring aggregated impressions from linked Campaign Manager 360 accounts into the advertising workspace, giving you more insight into your campaign’s performance across the funnel.

Additionally, we’ll make it easier to surface non-Google campaign data in Analytics through improvements to cost data import. By connecting your Pinterest, Reddit and Snap advertising accounts directly from your Analytics property, you will automatically see non-Google campaign data in your cross-channel performance report, it will be mapped to Analytics traffic source dimensions with metrics like “ads cost,” “ads clicks” and “ads impressions.”

Built-in planning and budgeting tools

Google Analytics 4 provides customers with valuable cross-channel campaign performance insights and soon we’ll make these insights more actionable for your business. To make it easier to optimize in-flight media and confidently allocate your spend, we’re rolling out cross-channel budgeting as a beta in the coming months in Google Analytics 4. This update will include a projections report that allows you to track media pacing and projected performance against a target objective, like revenue, across channels. We’ll continue to evolve this space, so stay tuned for future announcements.

Built to be durable from the get go

In today’s evolving landscape, a durable measurement strategy is key to navigating a privacy-first future. Later this year, we will begin rolling out support for some of the Chrome Privacy Sandbox APIs to ensure you can continue to reach your audiences and measure effectively even without third-party cookies.

Also, to ensure you remain durable against regulatory and privacy changes, enhanced conversions in Google Analytics 4 helps to produce a more complete picture of your cross-channel conversion attribution. By combining hashed, consented first-party data with your existing conversion tags, your data is matched with other Google data in a privacy-safe way to give you a clearer, more comprehensive view of how your campaigns are truly performing. Then, streamline your workflow by effortlessly sending these enhanced conversions directly to Google Ads to power Google AI and improve the performance of your ads.

Simplifying things further, it’s easier than ever to share consent choices to Google Analytics 4 using Consent Mode. This way, you can tap into AI-powered behavioral modeling to unlock a complete view of your users' journeys.

Google Analytics 4 is truly built to be durable for the future. We'll continue to invest in giving you a tool that helps answer fundamental questions about your business across your consumer's entire path to purchase, despite ongoing changes in the measurement landscape.