GA4 Updates: New Features To Assist App Marketers via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google has announced several new features for its Google Analytics 4 platform aimed at helping app developers better understand user behavior and optimize their marketing campaigns.

The features provide more robust audience segmentation tools, additional performance uplift capabilities, and improved measurement for iOS campaigns.

According to a statement released by Google, the updates will give app marketers who use Google Analytics 4 “privacy-centric analytics to understand user behavior across both web and app—all in one place.”

The AI-powered insights will also assist developers in boosting campaign performance.

Enhanced Audience Tools for App Marketers

One of the key new capabilities is enhanced audience management.

Developers can now create suggested audiences of users who have not received push notifications, allowing more targeted engagement.

Google underscores the potential impact of this update, noting that only 37% of consumers enable push notifications upon downloading apps.

Google says audiences created for apps and websites will automatically exclude irrelevant users when used for ad campaigns.

Performance Boost and Comprehensive Measurement

App advertisers can now incorporate aggregated data from consenting signed-in users to lift campaign performance. Google states this has increased Android app engagement conversions by up to 10% in initial tests.

Advertisers can utilize the aggregated data collected by turning on Google signals in the connected GA4 account.

Google has also introduced a URL parameter called gbraid that allows for better measurement of iOS app conversions from web campaigns that direct users to download an app.

GA4 makes integrating with this new gbraid parameter easy, enabling full tracking of web-to-app conversion data for iOS apps.

Enhanced iOS Campaign Measurement and Performance

To better track iOS campaigns while protecting user privacy, Google has introduced new features in GA4, like integration with Apple’s SKAdNetwork and on-device conversion tracking.

These allow conversion data to be collected without personally identifiable information leaving the user’s device or being shared with third parties, including Google.

Support for additional consent-based sign-in methods like phone numbers has also been added.

Further, Google has introduced a beta feature for geo-targeted conversion lift measurement. This allows A/B testing to measure the incremental impact of iOS app campaigns based on geography.

In Summary

Google has introduced several privacy-focused updates to GA4 to help app marketers better understand user behavior on iOS.

Key enhancements include more robust audience segmentation, consenting signed-in user data aggregation, improved iOS campaign measurement, and new geo-targeted lift measurement.

With a focus on privacy-centric analytics, these updates aim to provide app marketers with the information they need to optimize campaigns while protecting user data.

Source: Google
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