If you're starting to use GA4 to analyse marketing performance and are accustomed to using Universal Analytics (UA), you may feel a bit lost. In this article I'll cover:
How to use the new acquisition reports
How attribution modelling works in GA4
How to change attribution settings and where they take effect
The first thing you'll notice when you log into GA4 is that there are reports for both 'User acquisition' and 'Traffic acquisition'.
The 'Traffic acquisition' report is the most similar to the 'All traffic > Channels' report that you may be familiar with from Universal Analytics. It's session-based and tells you what channels drove new or returning users to your website. Like UA the channel that gets credit for the session is the one that drove the last non-direct click.
In contrast, the 'User acquisition' report tells you the channel where new users first arrived at your site. Use this report to understand which channels are 'introducers' - introducing people to your site for the first time.
How attribution modelling works in GA4
So the 'Traffic acquisition' report gives credit to the channel that drove the last non-direct click and the 'User acquisition' gives credit to the first click. However, there is more to attribution in GA4 than first meets the eye from these reports.
For the first time in GA, you have the option to change the attribution model that allocates credit to channels. Google recommends (and defaults to) 'data-driven', for which they use machine learning algorithms to determine the touch points that are most likely to drive conversions.
Depending on your business, you may want to experiment with one of the other attribution models documented here. You can even change this back and forth to see how channels get different credit depending on which touch-points in the user journey are given credit for conversions.
To change the attribution model in GA4: go to Admin > Attribution Settings.
Changing attribution settings only affects certain reports
Here's the thing, and it's not very clear within the GA4 interface: you might think that changing these settings will change all your acquisition reports, but this isn't the case.
Changing the setting doesn't affect the user acquisition, traffic acquisition, or the main conversions report. In fact, the only place you can see these changes in the standard reports section of GA4 is on the conversions report when you drill down into a single conversion event like this:
In the Explore section, where you can create custom reports from scratch, you have more flexibility to view data from different attribution models. But here's where it gets easy to get confused about what data you're looking at. You'll see three different variations on 'channel' if you search dimensions. The 'Default channel group' is the one that relates to the attribution model you've selected in your GA4 settings.
The other place you can leverage this new ability to view and compare different attribution models is in the advertising section. You can find this in the main navigation on the left hand site.
Use these reports to:
See how channels get credit according to the attribution model you have selected in the GA4 settings
Understand which channels are most commonly involved as early touchpoints, mid touchpoints, and late touchpoints
Compare different attribution models side by side
Summing up: attribution in GA4
There are greater options around attribution modelling in GA4 than were available in Universal Analytics. There's a built-in first touch report showing how your users found you in the first instance, and you now have the ability to change between different attribution models.
On the other hand, it can be confusing. It's not necessarily clear how changes in attribution settings affect reports, and with various different acquisition dimensions it's easy to get mixed up especially when building custom reports.
This table summarises the three different channel dimensions, what they mean and where you can find them in reports:
Dimension | Description | Scope | Report(s) |
Session default channel grouping | The last (non-direct) click gets credit | Session-based | Traffic acquisition report |
First user default channel grouping | The first click gets credit | User-based | User acquisition report |
Default channel grouping | Credit is distributed according to the attribution method selected in the attribution settings | Event-based | Conversions report(when drilled into a single conversion event), Explore section, Advertising section |
Now you know where to find the data you need to analyse marketing performance. But if your campaign data hasn't been collected optimally these reports will be of limited use. So make sure you're up to speed on the latest changes affecting campaign tagging in GA4 by reading my blog post How to use campaign tagging in GA4.
You can also download my campaign tagging template from the resources page, which will help you manage your campaign tagged links for GA4.
Comentarios