Google’s bringing some new, AI-powered elements to Google Analytics, in order to help marketers make more informed decisions, and tap into key opportunities as they arise.
The new updates are part of Google Analytics 4, which has been in development over the past few years, and will soon be the only option, as Google phases out existing standard and 360 analytics tools. If you haven’t upgraded to Analytics 4 yet, you’ll want to do it soon (older versions will be shut down on July 1, 2024), and if you have, you’ll soon have access to these new features.
First off, Google’s rolling out new generated insights, which are AI-powered notes that will highlight key data events.
The intent here is to provide more simplified, plain language explanations of opportunities within your data, to keep you on top of each element.
As per Google:
“Imagine your “Purchase” events spiked on a series of individual dates. Our AI engine works through the countless combinations of dimensions and metrics to proactively connect the dots, explaining why these spikes are happening. These insights will be written in a natural, easy-to-understand way, almost like a colleague summarizing the key takeaways for you.”
So it’s using conversational AI to better summarize key data notes, which may or may not help you identify the reasons for any fluctuations.
Google’s also adding aggregated impressions from linked Campaign Manager 360 accounts providing more insight into campaign performance across the funnel.
“Additionally, we’ll make it easier to surface non-Google campaign data in Analytics through improvements to cost data import. By connecting your Pinterest, Reddit and Snap advertising accounts directly from your Analytics property, you will automatically see non-Google campaign data in your cross-channel performance report, it will be mapped to Analytics traffic source dimensions with metrics like “ads cost,” “ads clicks” and “ads impressions.”
Google’s also rolling out cross-channel budgeting, which will include a projections report to track media pacing, as well as projected performance against a target objective, while it’s also planning to implement support for some of the Chrome Privacy Sandbox APIs, providing more ways to measure campaign performance without third-party cookies.
In other words, Google’s also moving to integrate more of its post-cookie measurement tools into Analytics, which will provide more insight in line with its evolving data privacy shifts, which will eventually see the full phase out of cookie tracking.
Though when exactly cookie tracking is going away is hard to estimate, because Google keeps shifting its cookie end date in order to minimize industry disruption. Back in April, Google delayed the deprecation of third party cookies for a third time in order to meet the requirements of the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which has raised various concerns in regards to how the move will impact the broader digital marketing industry, and Google’s competitors in the space.
But at some stage, cookie tracking is on the way out, and when that happens, Google Analytics will ideally have measures in place, along with AI tools, to help identify possibly more opportunities than ever, despite reduced data insight.
It’s worth noting, and worth considering within your planning, with these new alerts potentially adding a significant new element to your planning.