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Unlock the Power of Programmatic Advertising for Your Dealership

Programmatic

Unlock the Power of Programmatic Advertising for Your Dealership

Dawn Paul

Marketing Research Reports to Guide Strategic Business Decisions

Press Release

Marketing Research Reports to Guide Strategic Business Decisions

Jennifer Flanagan

How to Enhance Your Search Marketing Visibility

Blog

How to Enhance Your Search Marketing Visibility

Sheri Cosgrove

Harness the Potential of GA4 for Enhanced Ecommerce Insights

Blog

Sheri Cosgrove

Harness the Potential of GA4 for Enhanced Ecommerce Insights

As marketers, we’re always looking to make the most out of the data available to us. This requires a focused effort to determine which details about our customers offer the most value — which is…

The great shift to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is underway and offers users a plethora of tools and features that go beyond what was possible with UA. The recently launched GA4 platform has created quite a buzz in the digital marketing world, and advertisers are already weighing in on the advantages (and pitfalls) of the new platform. Here’s the latest on GA4 for brand marketers. Benefits of GA4 GA4 introduces new features for advertisers and revamped tracking methodology to ensure data is collected and stored in compliance with today’s widespread privacy regulations. Marketers will immediately benefit from GA4’s new data acquisition and management model, which is better equipped to track every detail of the customer journey without the need to implement Google Tag Manager. GA4 also refines the process of cross-device tracking but does not collect or store IP addresses (meaning an easier time for users looking to keep personal data secure). GA4 is built to make the most of first-party cookies as third-party data makes its inevitable exit. The introduction of the parameters tab and new data visualization tools gives marketers additional tools to efficiently manage and act upon first-party data. While familiar functions may appear under new labels, the ability to filter this data through reports and explorations makes the platform a powerful home base for marketing metrics and insights. Challenges With GA4 As with any new technology, there is a learning curve when it comes to navigating the layout and functions of GA4. This can be especially true for those who are familiar with the old UA layout. Although GA4 offers numerous benefits for improving your data-driven marketing efforts, there are some hurdles users have faced with the new platform. One of the biggest changes between GA4 and its predecessor is the limited data that can be collected. With a partial view of user interactions and behavior, it can be challenging to gain a holistic view of your audience’s needs and wants. This means you will need to explore how to leverage the limited data to your advantage. Another major hurdle that marketers have mentioned is the difference between hit types and events. UA has hit types, while GA4 has events. These two are not the same, so understanding the difference between hit types and events is crucial in getting the most out of your analytics. GA4 has definitely shaken things up in the world of data tracking and attribution, with the loss of multi-touch models causing concern among users. The change in access to only last-click and data-driven methods for attributing conversion metrics means data and tracking visibility may be impacted. Growing pains are to be expected after nearly a decade with UA as the default marketing tool for many digital teams. However, GA4 is designed to give you deeper insights into your customers and how they interact with your products and services. With its advanced features and capabilities, GA4 helps you optimize your marketing strategy and create better customer experiences. In the ever-changing digital ecosystem, GA4 provides marketers with an even more sophisticated solution to gain greater insights, allowing for more targeted and personalized marketing strategies. GA4 can be a bit tricky to navigate, but with the right approach and some diligence, you'll be able to make the most out of the platform and boost your analytics game.

Data & Analytics

Dawn Paul

GA4 Update: What Advertisers Need To Know

The great shift to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is underway and offers users a plethora of tools and features that go beyond what was possible with UA. The recently launched GA4 platform has created quite…

Navigating an all-new UI takes practice, even with one designed to be as intuitive as Google’s newest analytics platform. Advertisers should continue to familiarize themselves with a few of Google’s key upgrades, both to the standard data analysis dashboards and campaign-building processes. In part I of our blog on navigating GA4’s new UI, we addressed how to plan for, build, and optimize custom events within the interface. Today we’ll examine Google “Events,” including best practices for keeping track of customer interactions and the present limitations of the events feature. Best Practices for Event Naming An event is Google’s umbrella term for any customer interaction with your brand online. GA4’s new event model allows advertisers to curate event tracking to granular user engagements that best represent their brand’s specific customer journey, from discovery all the way to product purchase and beyond. Each step your customers take closer to conversion can (and should) be traceable through an event, in order to identify potential weak links in a campaign’s performance and optimize ads post-launch. Unsurprisingly, the number of possible event types at your disposal is as vast as the number of businesses utilizing Google’s ad platform to extend their reach. Keeping each event distinct and organized will save your team headaches in the months ahead as you sift through incoming campaign data. Here are the keys to naming events in GA4: Event names must be unique within each event type. Event names should be descriptive and clear so that anyone looking at an event report can easily understand what the event is tracking. Event names are case sensitive — marketers should stick exclusively to lowercase letters and underscores instead of spaces and capitalization to avoid confusion (ex. use "add_to_cart" instead of "AddToCart" or "Add to Cart”). Event names should be concise and not exceed 40 characters in length. Event names can include up to 5 parameters, which can be used to provide additional context or information about the event. Parameter values should be strings or numbers, and should not contain any personally identifiable information. Follow these rules to ensure each of your events remains consistent and avoids crossing wires with other events. Modifying an Event GA4 makes modifying events fairly straightforward: Go to the GA4 property and click on "Events" in the left-hand menu. Find the event you want to modify and open its details page. On the details page, click "Edit" at the top of the page. Modify the event name or any other details as needed. Remember to hit "Save" Modifying an event in GA4 affects any and all data collected for that event — if you change the name or parameters of an event, the historical data associated with that event will be updated accordingly. For more major changes, it may be worth creating a new event instead of modifying an existing one. This way, historical data for the old event remains unaffected as your new event begins collecting fresh user data. Know Your Event’s Limits While GA4 allows up to 50 event parameters per event, only the first 25 parameters are available for use in reports. Similarly, the platform supports up to 50 custom metrics and dimensions per property, but only 10 of each can be used in a single report. Further technical limitations to GA4’s event tracking include data processing latency, which can extend up to 24 hours and prevent reports from reflecting real-time data, and a default data retention period of 14 months. Historical data may not be available beyond the retention period unless you regularly export it or use Google's BigQuery data warehouse. Thanks to GA4’s well-organized event types, you can gain greater visibility into the user journey across platforms. By utilizing event types, you can now see how well your campaigns are performing in a much more granular way. With well-organized, customized event types, you can stay up-to-date on consumer trends, discover new audiences for growth, and make sure your campaigns are reaching the right people for maximum impact.

Digital Marketing

Olivia Hull

Keys To Navigating GA4’s New UI (Part II)

Navigating an all-new UI takes practice, even with one designed to be as intuitive as Google’s newest analytics platform. Advertisers should continue to familiarize themselves with a few of Google’s key upgrades, both to the…

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Keys To Navigating GA4's New UI

Digital Marketing

Jennifer Flanagan

Keys To Navigating GA4’s New UI

GA4 has a lot to offer when it comes to collecting user behavior and conversion data. Among GA4’s most powerful features is the ability to create what Google terms custom “events,” which enable advertisers to…

The leap to GA4 draws ever nearer, and along with it comes the need to quickly get marketing departments on board with a host of new tools and reporting features. GA4 caused some initial confusion with its rollout of both “Reports” and another feature they’re calling “Explorations,” with each serving a similar-yet-different function in this new digital ecosystem. Here’s everything you need to master GA4 reporting and ensure you’re using this powerful new tool to its fullest. GA4 Reports: An Overview The goal of Google’s new reporting framework is to provide marketers with detailed insights into their respective businesses. GA4’s big selling point is its advanced ability to attribute data to individual users across platforms and devices without infringing on any data privacy policies. Reports are built by connecting this user data to site activity, identifying patterns in engagement, conversion rates, and several other key trends to develop a more flexible marketing action plan. In addition to standard reporting parameters like identifying the origins of incoming traffic and which campaigns are driving the most activity, GA4 includes a “Realtime Report.” This report consists of data up to the latest 30 minutes — a useful feature for catching any potential snags with a new campaign or product launch. Advertisers can also create custom filters to easily view subsets of user data (and even compare datasets side-by-side). Creating Successful GA4 Reports GA4 comes preloaded with about 20 standard reports built for your convenience, but marketers can still tailor reporting parameters to their liking. Creating a new report is fairly user-friendly; options to edit an existing report, make a copy, or build an entirely new one can all be found under “Reports” followed by “Library.” A good report accurately measures activity with a goal-specific KPI. For digital marketing teams, this often takes the form of comparing all traffic with organic-only traffic to gauge the impact of paid promotions or page vs. site conversion rates to adjust which pages are lagging behind in prompting user actions. Explorations Explained If you want to expand your view of site data and other insights, the “Explore” tab on the left-hand side of GA4’s base dashboard unlocks more granular reporting capabilities. According to Google, Explorations is a “collection of advanced techniques that go beyond standard reports to help you uncover deeper insights about your customers' behavior.” In practice, Explorations gives marketers a chance to tinker with every filter and data subset they can get their hands on at the user level. That means increased functionality, additional dimensions and segmentation, and ultimately more pointed insights to spur further action. This tab is also the portal to use visualization tools like pathway and funnel explorations, which break the average customer’s journey with your brand into easily viewable (and of course, trackable) steps. How detailed can explorations be? There are some technical limits to the number of filters, segments, and individual explorations you can create within GA4. Per Google, advertisers can create up to: -200 individual explorations per user per property -500 shared explorations per property -10 segments per exploration -10 filters per tab Quickly Learn Your Way Around Explorations Marketers familiar with Google’s suite of tools (Drive, Sheets, Docs, and so forth) will feel right at home using Explorations. Options to create a new form or use a pre-configured template (such as free-form, funnel, or segment overlap explorations) are spread across the top of the page, with previous projects organized below. After opening a new exploration, a pair of columns on the left (labeled Variables and Tab Settings) contain optional filters and visualizations to produce your desired report. Common demographic targeting levers like age, gender, and interest — as well as all attribution settings — are nested within the Variables column under “Dimensions.” Key Data Differences Between Reports and Explorations Standard reports are designed for top-level data analysis, with some dimensions and metrics only available through this tab and not supported within Explorations. While reports can quickly identify rises and fall in key events without digging into segmented data, Explorations will likely draw more attention since it houses the most advanced filters, user-level data, and broader functionality. Though the transition to GA4 may include an unwanted learning curve for advertisers used to Universal Analytics’ more familiar dashboards and tools, correctly utilizing both reports and explorations within GA4 will undoubtedly serve every brand’s long-term marketing efforts.

Digital Marketing

Jennifer Flanagan

Deep Dive Into GA4 Reports & Explorations

The leap to GA4 draws ever nearer, and along with it comes the need to quickly get marketing departments on board with a host of new tools and reporting features. GA4 caused some initial confusion…

Google Analytics (UA) vs. GA4: What You Need to Know

Data & Analytics

Olivia Hull

Google Analytics (UA) vs. GA4: What You Need to Know

Earlier this year, Google announced big plans to phase out Universal Analytics entirely in favor of the new-and-improved GA4 platform. The move presents a major challenge for many marketers relying on historical UA data for…

Kudos from our Clients

Our partnership with Adtaxi has been just that—a partnership. From the very first strategy session, Adtaxi sought to understand our unique position in the nonprofit world and went to great lengths to craft a digital marketing plan that felt natural for our organization. As a result of them spending time learning our organization, our audiences, and our goals, we have seen extraordinary results from our work together. I greatly appreciated how Adtaxi manages our partnership.

International Nonprofit Organization

Adtaxi has been a great agency extension and partner for our digital media advertising needs. The team is personable, responsive, effective, and have been an integral contributor in our client campaign successes.

Communications Agency

As an advertising coordinator for an NFL team, it is not uncommon to have many projects going on at once. Fortunately, we partner with Adtaxi for all our digital marketing efforts, and Adtaxi over delivers regardless of the specific goals of each project. The team has been great to deal with, they execute, they are flexible, and they never fail to deliver real results time after time.

NFL Team

I've been working with Adtaxi for 3 years, and I've seen excellent results on our digital marketing campaigns. The communication with them is A+ and always prompt when you want to make a campaign/ad change or set up a meeting. I speak with them weekly, and it's a phone call that I enjoy having during my very busy work day.

Dental Organization

My team at Adtaxi has never let me down. They are innovative and forward-thinking, and help my company maneuver through all the digital marketing avenues there are to create awareness and ultimately conversions to increase our bottom line.

Auto Parts Retailer

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