Google announced updates to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) today. The coming months will see improved cross-channel reporting and budgeting, AI-generated insights and some integration with Chrome Privacy Sandbox.
“Measurement is essential for marketers to understand the impact of their efforts and make more informed decisions,” Steve Ganem, director of product management for Google Analytics, wrote in a blog post. “Today, we’re highlighting new features and key investment areas to help you make better business decisions.”
Dig deeper: 3 ways GA4 is way better than UA
The features announced today are:
- Third-party ad data: Users will be able to import advertising data from Pinterest, Reddit and Snap directly into GA4. The non-Google campaign data will be included in the cross-channel performance report and mapped to Analytics traffic source dimensions with metrics like “ads cost,” “ads clicks” and “ads impressions.”
- Cross-channel budgeting: Google will also release a cross-channel budgeting feature in beta. The company says it will include a projections report to track media pacing and projected performance against a target objective, like revenue, across channels.
- Campaign Manager 360: GA4 will start importing aggregated impressions from linked Campaign Manager 360 accounts into the advertising workspace.
- An AI to call its own: GA4 will also get an artificial intelligence engine built to find patterns in “countless combinations of dimensions and metrics” and report them in plain language.
- Cookieless measurement: Later this year GA4 will start supporting some Chrome Privacy Sandbox APIs “to ensure you can continue to reach your audiences and measure effectively even without third-party cookies.”
Why we care. The ability to add data from Pinterest, Reddit and Snap is a big step forward. It does beg the question why these three sites? While Meta seems unlikely to work with Google on this, what about TikTok and, if anyone is still advertising there, X/Twitter? Likewise, being able to budget across channels will also be helpful.
However, GA4 launched nearly five years ago and there’s still no action on the one thing everyone complains about: the UI.
About the author
Constantine von Hoffman is managing editor of MarTech. A veteran journalist, Con has covered business, finance, marketing and tech for CBSNews.com, Brandweek, CMO, and Inc. He has been city editor of the Boston Herald, news producer at NPR, and has written for Harvard Business Review, Boston Magazine, Sierra, and many other publications. He has also been a professional stand-up comedian, given talks at anime and gaming conventions on everything from My Neighbor Totoro to the history of dice and boardgames, and is author of the magical realist novel John Henry the Revelator. He lives in Boston with his wife, Jennifer, and either too many or too few dogs.
