It’s been a hell of a year for Google Analytics.
Twelve months ago, Google Analytics dropped last-click attribution as its default, switching to an algorithmic model it calls “Data-Driven Attribution.”
The company began 2022 with an important goal to get its entire customer base onto a newfangled but less-used product called Google Analytics 4 (GA4). Universal Analytics (UA), the longtime baseline analytics service, was to sunset by October 2023.
UA was set for a full shutdown next year, but Google Analytics announced on Thursday that the company will push that deadline to July 2024 for customers of UA360, Google’s enterprise analytics product. Smaller or less sophisticated analytics clients will simply have the transition done for them in the background by Google that can be turned on when they choose to migrate (or, someday, when the choice is forced on them).
Force-shifting the entire web to an unpopular product is a tall order (after all, GA4 already existed for years with low adoption). Then Google Analytics was outlawed in major European markets due to a GDPR ruling. That ruling rests heavily on Google Analytics’ collection of European citizens’ IP address info, since US companies are subject to US government subpoenas even for data that never leaves a European server.
So, Google Analytics is using carrots and sticks to convince hundreds of thousands of UA account holders who don’t care and don’t want to update that they need to update. And meanwhile, EU regulators have banned Google Analytics in France, Germany, Italy and Austria, to name a few.
Oh, also, mobile platform privacy policies make it impossible to track users around the web by site pixels, which is the lifeblood of UA.
“As customers migrate to GA4 they are, in some places, unlearning concepts that we had taught them, frankly,” Russ Ketchum, Google Analytics director of product management, told AdExchanger. “Universal Analytics taught people to think in terms of sessions and pageviews, and now we’re changing that.”
AdExchanger caught up with Ketchum about the GA4 deadline delay and the vision for Google Analytics in a privacy-based web.
AdExchanger: Why the need to delay the deadline?
RUSS KETCHUM: The migration has proven to be challenging for everybody. That’s something we expected. But in certain pockets, it’s been especially challenging.
The announcements today are a commitment on both ends of the spectrum of complexity to make the migration easier.
For customers with the most sophisticated setup, which are Google Analytics 360 customers, we’ve given them an extension to the sunset period. Because their implementations are so complex, they need a longer period of time to collect data in both platforms, so that they have better comparisons when they actually transition.
On the other side of the spectrum, we have customers that get potentially no handholding even from Google. That’s why we’re introducing updates to our Setup Assistant. Up until this point, our Setup Assistant has provided various tools to help a customer migrate. What we’re announcing is the Jumpstart Initiative starting early in 2023, where we’re going to actually automate the steps of the Setup Assistant so that all customers will have a functioning GA4 property in place.
That will comply with all of their settings from Universal Analytics and, of course, give customers an opt-out option.
When you say “certain pockets” have struggled with the migration, which pockets do you mean?
Some folks have a heightened awareness of change that’s occurring. And some don’t. That’s the starting point.
The purpose of our messaging over the past couple of years has been to get to a state where Universal Analytics and GA4 are being used side by side.
For example, Suncorp, one of Australia’s largest financial service brands, have been in a dual setup state for so long that they actually have two years of overlapping data. So it’s relatively easy for them to translate and see how the new world is different.
But others haven’t done that early adoption. Those are the customers that we’re really aiming for with the announcements today.
Is there any concern that with the deadline delay, businesses will just delay the migration work?
I’m confident that our large customers have gotten the message and that this extension only helps them. The other side, though, is why we’re announcing Jumpstart.
More time isn’t going to help with some customers. If they’ve ignored it until this point, they’re going to continue to ignore it. And so that’s why in 2023 we’re introducing an automated form of the migration, which essentially takes the steps that we have in our Setup Assistant today, and automates them. So even if a customer hasn’t engaged to this point, we’re jumpstarting them on that path.
Does the GA4 sunset delay also delay the deadline on IP address collection?
Let me split that question a little bit. Because when we stop collecting or reporting in Universal Analytics and dropping the IP are different. The decision not to log or record IP addresses was something that we introduced earlier this year in GA4 and that is true of GA4 right now.
When we say that GA4 is a privacy-centric analytics platform looking forward, the reason we’re not collecting IP address anymore is we don’t need it for anything. The only thing IP was really doing was powering geo lookups. And we’re able to do that locally on the client side now.
Customers who take the extra time to use Universal Analytics will continue collecting IP addresses as usual, though?
Exactly.
You mentioned GA4 doesn’t need IP address data. But if a customer says they need or want to continue collecting IP address info, must they add a separate data warehouse or are there options available?
This is where Google Analytics has an opinionated stance. Not just towards our customers, but also to the end users.
It’s out of respect to the end user that we’re not collecting any more IP information about them. And so there have been plenty of features that competitors or other companies have introduced in the past that folks asked for with GA4. And we said, “No. it isn’t in the best interest of end users.”
I would put this decision in that camp.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed.
