Google Marketing Platform Essentials: Analytics 4 demo

Brian Park, a Sales Engineer at Google, demonstrates how to leverage Google Analytics 4 properties for generating insights and creating audiences tailored for ad campaigns. The demo utilizes the fully functional GA4 property of the Google Merchandise Store as an example.

Google Analytics 4's Intelligent Home serves as the main dashboard, offering high-level reporting on web and app data streams. It includes links to frequently used reports and automated insights powered by machine learning, such as predictive audiences or anomaly detection alerts. The Insights feature highlights unique opportunities for exploration or action while a search bar with natural language processing provides quick answers to user queries.

The Reports tab in Google Analytics 4 offers a variety of pre-built reports and cards providing insights into user behavior on websites or mobile apps. Under the Life Cycle section, users can access detailed data on traffic acquisition, engagement, monetization, and retention to measure customer journey success. Customizable features allow editing existing reports or creating new ones via the Library tab for tailored analytics needs. This flexibility surpasses Universal Analytics by simplifying customization while retaining essential pre-built options.

The Explore feature in Google Analytics allows users to address complex questions by creating custom reports and visualizations using a drag-and-drop editor. It offers templates for free-form analysis, funnel explorations, and user lifetime analysis. These analyses can be easily shared with other authorized users of the same GA4 property.

Enhanced Audience Building in Google Analytics 4 Google Analytics 4 democratizes advanced audience-building features, previously exclusive to Google Analytics 360 users. Users can create audiences by setting conditions based on dimensions, metrics, and event data collected from a property. These audiences accumulate qualifying users over time and integrate seamlessly with tools like Google Ads or Display & Video 360 for activation. Predictive modeling options allow the creation of predictive audiences that forecast outcomes such as purchases or churns using analytics data.

Creating Custom Audiences Made Simple The platform simplifies segmentation through templated options and custom audience builders where specific user behaviors define segments—like repeat purchasers or visitors to particular pages. For example, an organic search-based audience is created by filtering traffic sources under 'First user default channel grouping' with "Organic Search" criteria applied.

Seamless Integration With Activation Accounts Once saved, new audiences are automatically shared across linked accounts like Google Ads within one to two days while providing estimated sizes during setup for better planning insights.