This is the second part of my recap posts on the Google Ads On Air Privacy event from January 2022. You can read part one here. I think this one is going to be its own post, as it got rather long!
Let’s do this! These remaining videos are longer than the ones in the first recap post.
Navigating a Privacy-Focused Ecosystem with Google Analytics
You can watch this video here until February 11, 2022.
Here is what will be covered:
The presentation is leading off with first party data. This is clearly the theme for 2022.
What should advertisers do?
How do you actually do this?
You can see here it is recommended that you opt in to enhanced attribution.
What are the steps, you ask?
You are really going to need some kind of plan to augment what Google Analytics 4 can capture with your own data (the advertiser’s data if you’re an agency or consultant).
You have 2 options to augment GA4 data with your (advertiser) data:
1. Data Import
I will note that the way this is presented here is very skewed toward sites that sell products.
2. Measurement Protocol
Taking control of how your data is used in Google Analytics 4:
Somehow you can both remove individual data but also can’t see individual data? This is confusing.
Now on to Executing Privacy-Centric Activation
You can view Google Ads data within GA4 if you connect the accounts. This capability is available now. You can also create audiences in GA4 and use them in Google Ads, also a capability that is available now. You can also designate your conversion actions in GA4 and export them to a linked Google Ads account. I for one would like clarification on which tags and methods we are supposed to be using for conversions? It seems to swing back and forth between using the Global Site Tag (Google Ads) and then importing from GA4. I think we could all use clarification on this topic.
You can export GA4 data to Big Query
You can apparently have user ID data in GA4?
How on earth is this “privacy-centric”???????
Now on to “User More Automation and Machine Learning”
GA4 uses modeling heavily:
If you still use Universal Analytics, you don’t get these benefits. Obviously, huge push to adopt GA4.
Use Data Driven Attribution
DDA uses modeling.
Predictive Metrics in GA4
You can use any of these predictive audiences in Google Ads.
Wrapping up:
The overall message of this presentation was definitely get on board with Google Analytics 4. Not that that is a new message from Google! But this presentation did talk about using GA4 together with Google Ads and first party data, but somehow all in a privacy-centric manner? I hope that there will be more shared as features talked about in this presentation are actually rolled out.