Google Analytics 4 is an essential tool to power your AI strategy with the right insights – even in an evolving privacy and technology landscape. Since its inception, we have launched many durable solutions and we continue to invest in expanding this offering to help you build the right measurement foundation. Today, we’re introducing new Google Analytics 4 features and integrations that will enable you to unlock durable performance even after Chrome plans to deprecate third-party cookies.
As previously announced, we’re rolling out support for the Chrome Privacy Sandbox’s Protected Audience API and it will become widely available in early 2024. This will let you continue to reach your audiences even without third-party cookies.
In addition to the Privacy Sandbox integrations, in the next few weeks we will start introducing support for enhanced conversions in Google Analytics 4. Enhanced conversions is a feature that can improve the accuracy of your conversion measurement. It supplements a marketers’ existing conversion tags and allows them to have a more accurate view of user conversions using hashed, first party conversion data from their website. With this new capability, you’ll be able to more seamlessly use enhanced conversions by sending them from Google Analytics 4 to Google Ads. This means that you won’t have to create two conversion types in each of the two systems, reducing the time it takes to get started.
To make sure you’re prepared to use these features, you should have the proper consent setup, especially if you have traffic coming from the European Economic Area (EEA). To do that you should:
- Determine the best way to obtain consent, either by using a Consent Management Platform (CMP) or an in-house solution
- Ensure the consent banner is configured correctly to respect user choices
- If you choose to use a Google-certified consent management platform, your provider will automatically update to the newest version of consent mode
- If you choose not to use a Google-certified consent management platform, implement Consent mode to send your users' consent choices from your cookie banner or widget so that Google Analytics 4 tags and SDK can dynamically adjust the collected data depending on user consent.
For example, for users who decline consent, behavioral modeling with consent mode can help solve for unknowns in the consumer journey to give you a full view of consumer performance.
All of these features and updates have the goal of making Google Analytics 4 a privacy-centric, comprehensive, and effective measurement platform for our advertisers. Throughout 2024, we’ll continue to introduce new privacy-centric features and provide detailed guidance for the durable measurement and audience solutions you need to be prepared for third party cookie deprecation mid-next year.