The web runs on Google Analytics (GA). Not by choice. It became the de facto analytics tools many, many years ago. Adobe Analytics has been adopted by big-brands and large e-commerce companies. But Google Analytics is believed to own as much as 55% to 86% of the market.
January Spring focuses on pre-click analytics as well as post-click analytics because we know that most businesses served by our publishers are Google Analytics users. This summer Google is forcing all websites using GA to upgrade to GA4. To help our media partners navigate through this forced upgrade, we’ve built you this go-to guide.
Keep your focus on engagement.
As you update your analytics tracking from Universal Analytics (UA) to GA4 you’ll see some key differences. GA4 has shifted their focus from measuring the number of people visiting and leaving your site (bounce rate) to measuring engagement (how people interact with your site).
Rather than just measuring the number of users who exit from your landing page (the old bounce rate), engagement rate also considers the amount of time a user spends on the landing page before exiting. To measure engagement, check out these new metrics in GA4 or continue reading.
Terms to know that may look a little different in GA4:
Engaged Session: An engaged session is a user who does one of the following:
• has a visit of 10 seconds or more
• one or more conversion events
• two or more page views
Engagement Rate: This measures the percentage of all sessions that are engaged sessions. Engagement Rate is replacing Bounce Rate. You can still find bounce rate in your reports, but it is no longer a default metric.
Average Engagement Time: This refers to the average time that your website was experiencing interaction in the user’s browser or app. Average Engagement Time has replaced Average Session Duration in UA. These engagement metrics showcase user interest which will help with identifying ad traffic sources. Being able to identify such traffic allows you to see which source or advertisement is driving the most engagement to your site, even if your landing site is one page.
Google announced that they are sunsetting Universal Analytics July 1, 2023. If you haven’t set up GA4, now is the time! Good news is you can also run both UA and GA4 simultaneously until the cutover date.
As always, we are here to partner with you on analytics that demonstrate the value of your campaigns. Please reach out to your sales director for more information or help with the new analytics switch.