For decades, Google Analytics has been the most used tool to help marketers make decisions, as well as validate the results of their campaigns and different actions on their websites. However, measuring the path of the consumer is not easy, in a context in which we are witnessing a total change in the way of understanding the treatment of user data.
Google Analytics 4 replaces a tool that is “fast becoming obsolete”
Based on these premises, Google introduced two and a half years ago Google Analytics 4, an evolved analytics solution with data security as a priority. A tool that It will start to be implemented from next year.
Such as “In today’s measurement landscape, companies face new challenges in understanding their customers’ complex, cross-platform journeys, while also prioritizing user privacy. Universal Analytics was built for an online measurement generation anchored in the desktop web, independent sessions and more easily observable data from cookies. This measurement methodology it is rapidly becoming obsolete. In the meantime, Google Analytics 4 operates across all platforms, doesn’t rely solely on cookies, and uses an event-driven data model to deliver user-centric measurement.”
Google claims that Analytics 4 has “the flexibility to measure many different types of data, providing a robust analytics experience designed for the future”as it uses Google’s machine learning technology to display and predict new insights and «more importantly, it is designed to keep up with a changing ecosystem.”
Goodbye to Universal Analytics: it will stop processing data in July 2023
With the arrival of Analytics 4 it is inevitable that Universal Analytics, the previous generation of its metrics platform, says goodbye: thus, it will begin to be withdrawn during 2023. All standard Universal Analytics properties will stop processing new data in July 2023.
However, Google reported that because the new Analytics 360 experience was introduced only recently, properties will receive an additional three months of new data processing, through October 2023.
All standard Universal Analytics properties will stop processing new data from July 1, 2023, while 360 Universal Analytics properties will stop processing new data as of October 1, 2023. After these dates have passed, you will be able to access your previously processed data in Universal Analytics for at least six months.
That’s why you should switch to Google Analytics 4 as soon as possible: This will allow you to accumulate enough historical data in your Analytics 4 account before Universal Analytics goes out of business. You can migrate to Google Analytics 4 following that Google has made available to its users.
Privacy and cookies
Until now, Universal Analytics has allowed to obtain metrics through cookies, and this measurement methodology is rapidly becoming obsolete, especially after the data privacy problems that Analytics faces in the due to the transfer of personal data from Europe to Google in the United States and that has already caused problems in Austria and .
According to the press release «Google Analytics 4 is designed with privacy in mind» since in addition to operating on all platforms, it is not based exclusively on cookies and “uses an event-driven data model to deliver user-centric metrics.” In addition, Google assured that “Although Universal Analytics offers a variety of privacy controls, Google Analytics 4 was conceived with privacy at its core, to provide a better experience for both our customers and the user».
As the consultant told us in one of the chapters of our podcast, Google Analytics 4 «These solutions and controls are especially necessary in today’s global data privacy landscape, where users increasingly expect privacy protections and control over their data.”
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