DDB Corporate

As marketing morphs, there is a growing need to ensure the ability to work in a complex ever-evolving ecosystem. Data privacy is not just about regulatory compliance. It is more and more about ensuring brand reputation. Less than half of firms (43 percent per Forrester) have a view of their data across web and app. Mapping the consumer journey, identifying the key moments that matter and the opportunity to own them – all these are often what marketers are striving to do by tracking and monitoring consumer behavior. Putting in place the right measures and key performance indicators (KPIs) early in the process of creating an e-commerce business is as important as launching quickly.

Digital experiences need planning and design thinking. They need to be bought in media and optimized for better consumer experiences and understanding consumer behavior. Data is not a four-letter word anymore, it is more an acronym: DATA – Data, Analytics, Technology and Automation. Therefore, the growing need for a marketing technology stack that seamlessly brings together communications and digital experiences powered by DATA that helps understanding consumer behavior, manage campaigns end-to-end and deliver effective digital experiences.

Google Marketing Platform (GMP) is one such unified solution, efficient and continually evolving with the times. By design, GMP helps to deliver more relevant marketing, while making sure that privacy is respected while having control over data (eg: GA4 will also no longer store IP addresses). It includes an integrated set of advertising and analytics products that let you manage the entire customer journey.

How are users interacting across your multiple digital properties? Google Analytics provides web and app analytics. Google Data Studio allows users to share data from almost any source via interactive dashboards and reports. And you can run experiments on your digital properties, personalize the experience for users and leverage machine learning and automation with Google Optimize. For users to interact with the brand through other channels, use Google Display & Video 360 (DV360) with end-to-end digital marketing campaign management. Reach the right audiences and streamline the creative development process with DV360. Get the most out of your Search campaigns and respond to an ever-changing market in real time and at scale with Google Search Ads 360. Finally, Google Consumer Surveys helps to develop the market research questions you want to ask, and pose those questions to users around the world, efficiently.

  ​Digital experiences need planning and design thinking. They need to be bought in media and optimized for better consumer experiences and understanding consumer behavior 

The future of analytics is here with GA4. The future is consented. It’s modeled. It’s first-party. While it’s hard to find products of the past like GA1, 2 or 3, if you have been working with Google products the last 10 years, you will be able to relate to the past products and their evolution. There is also a podcast, The history of Google Analytics 4 or basically the history of Google Analytics. It is a nice conversational style listen for some evolutionary snippets.

What happens next? The older free version will stop processing new hits on July 1, 2023. This means it is better to launch new digital properties with GA4 and as an organization, you need to assign ownership for the migration to GA4 of the existing instances.

Dual setup is an implementation process where a GA4 property is deployed on web alongside an existing GA property. Upon completing this process, a website's measurement data is sent to both the GA and GA4 property. Customers should continue using the GA property as the source of truth until all relevant use cases are available in GA4. Here are at least five benefits with GA4:

1. Better activation: Activate insights & audiences across channels by leveraging direct integrations to media buying platforms. Access new integrations for reporting and bidding. your advertising campaigns across Web, iOS, and Android, in one place. Ability to onboard disparate data sets to centralize data for analysis, bidding, attribution, and audience activation.

2. Advanced Segmentation: Opportunity to combine data into advanced audience segments to reach users across channels and devices, while measuring and optimizing ROI. Evaluate YouTube ad performance in conversion reports. Streamline implementations across app and web, and for managing user consent, using flexible tagging. Collect first-party data with flexible tagging solutions

3. Better measurement: Ability to measure your business with a rebuilt event-based data collection model that blends app and web data for a comprehensive view of customers. Break down silos and centralize data with User-ID. Manage data and user privacy on multiple levels (data collection, ads personalization and data removal). Onboard and unify data with Data Import in GA4. Import offline data and events with Measurement Protocol

4. Faster reporting: Increased access to insights with faster reporting, embedded machine learning, automated insights and new editable reporting tools and metrics. Access predictive metrics for Audiences and Analysis. Measure user behavior and ecommerce activity with new tracking solutions. Collect granular data for ecommerce sites

5. Protect user privacy: As cookies become scarcer, GA4 will offer solutions that support developments in Google advertising products and preserve behavioral measurement while respecting user privacy. GA4 solutions include New User-ID options & integrations and Chrome Privacy Sandbox integrations and advanced modeling facilitating audience activation, conversion measurement and user journey measurement.

Start the process now! Know that GA4 needs to be treated and used like a new product in the Google Marketing Platform. While migration is possible from GA, the effort varies and it’s not quite straightforward in many cases. GA4 will continue to be part of the stack of free products (others include Tag Manager, Optimize, Data Studio and Audience). GA4 is designed for an evolving ecosystem, with machine learning at its core and therefore the expectation is better value from data. Access new and exclusive features and innovations claimed to be rather exclusive in GA4. With or without cookies, the GA4 claims that it will provide privacy-safe customer insights.