It’s been two and a half years since Google first announced Google Analytics 4, the latest version of its ubiquitous Google Analytics service.
Beginning last week, many publishers began receiving emails from Google – or banners atop their Google Analytics – announcing that support for the old version, Universal Analytics (UA), will end July 1, 2023.
TL;DR WARNING: Before you do anything … don’t.
WARNING WITH ADDITIONAL WORDS: If you are a publisher and switch to GA4 now, it will break your Dashboard analytics, and with it the ability to see your Mediavine RPM.
We know, Google says to switch. But we have over a year until July 1, 2023, and more significantly, there are some issues to be ironed out with GA4.
Despite many cool promises Google has made regarding GA4, which we’ll get to shortly, it’s not quite there yet, nor is support for GA4 on all platforms, including Mediavine.
So before you wreck your RPM calculations and likely other third-party tools, let’s dive into Google Analytics 4, when you should migrate and what our plan is.
Google Analytics 4 is designed as a cross-platform service for mobile web sites and mobile apps, geared toward large publishers that run both.
According to Google, it’s more privacy-centric than previous versions of Analytics and powered by machine learning to uncover more insights.
While that sounds great, what does it mean for the average publisher with Mediavine?
Honestly, with the exception of a handful of our biggest publishers, very few have their own apps and therefore will miss out on most of the biggest GA4 cross-platform upgrades.
The biggest benefit to GA4 is that it’s the future. It’s where new Google Analytics will be added in the years to come, and we will definitely recommend switching for this reason.
Eventually.
Once Mediavine and others commit to this transition and make it seamless and effective for publishers, it will be worthwhile. Today is not that day, and honestly, Google knows this.
Google made this announcement and established July 1, 2023 as a target date for tools like the Mediavine Dashboard to prepare — and we will.
In the meantime, however, all is well with UA.
With this date in mind, Mediavine can prioritize when to launch GA4 support, and we promise to alert you as soon as we do, giving you plenty of time to migrate.
For now, please know we’re well aware of this date.
Just click dismiss on that banner in your GA, archive that email, and rest assured that we’ll alert all of our publishers once we have GA4 support.
As for today? There’s nothing for you to do. Other than creating beautiful, optimized long-form content and being the best community of publishers imaginable.
GA4’s interface is quite a departure from the UA version of the analytics admin.
If you want to get a head start on familiarizing yourself with the new reports and functionality, Google encourages you to create a separate property in your Google Analytics account specifically for GA4.
Using a separate property allows you to run both UA and GA4 side by side.
Your UA property will still be the one that Mediavine uses for your ads stats and Grow tracking events, but you’ll be able to learn GA4 at your own pace, well before you’re forced to switch.
Our Support team has created step-by-step instructions on how to set-up a new GA4 property without interfering with your UA property.
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