Next steps for cross-channel measurement in Google Analytics

Reaching customers today can feel complex. More channels mean more choices and tougher budget decisions. That's why we're committed to giving you simple, data-driven ways to invest your marketing spend for great results.

Earlier this year, we announced new tools in Google Analytics to help you make better decisions about your budget and see performance across all channels. As the holiday season approaches, we want to remind you of these powerful tools and share what's coming next. These updates will help you make better choices about where to invest your marketing budget.

Powerful tools for cross-channel insights and campaign optimization available today

In Google Analytics’ advertising section, you will notice two different sections for Conversions and Key Events reporting. The conversions section gives you a more complete view of your performance across all your paid and organic channels. These new reports help you measure your cross-channel conversion performance and better understand how your campaigns make a difference¹.

As you choose where to spend your marketing dollars, you ask yourself: “What campaigns or channels contributed to the most conversions?” The cross-channel performance reporting helps you answer that question. It gives you a single view of the contributions your paid and organic channels had on the business outcomes you care about. This report has rich new metrics (e.g. return-on-ad-spend, cost-per-acquisition, revenue) and now includes additional dimensions for slicing-and-dicing.

For improved measurement across channels, you can use the attribution analysis report, which introduces assisted conversions and a refined funnel exploration. You can see how your media drives early engagement and interactions that lead to conversions. That way, it’s easy to identify the value of each interaction and optimize spend to improve campaign effectiveness.

Getting a view of your past performance is useful to make decisions today, but what if you could make timely adjustments to your campaigns before it’s too late? This is what you can do with cross-channel budgeting plans as it helps you track performance and optimize paid channel investments.

• Projection plans help you identify areas for improvement and make quick optimization decisions. You can see how advertising channels are expected to perform against your performance indicators (KPIs) like spend, conversions, and revenue. 
• Scenario plans help you determine the optimal distribution of your budget by letting you explore potential ROI at different budget levels. 

To achieve a more complete view of your ROI across campaigns, it’s essential to evaluate your performance across each of your channels. Now we’re enabling you to bring this campaign data into Google Analytics in just a few clicks. This includes cost and aggregate impression data from Meta, TikTok, Snap, Pinterest and Reddit. For channels not supported, you can continue to import this data manually using the data import feature. In the near future, we will expand the automated data connections to more channels.

What’s more, conversions now provide you with more flexible attribution capabilities so that you can customize the lookback window or define how conversions are counted for each individual conversion. For example, set up separate conversion events for add-to-cart actions and purchase actions, each with different lookback windows and counting types, and reach site visitors that abandoned their cart. This enables you to tailor your campaign optimization strategies for each conversion type that you choose to share with Google Ads.

What’s next: a fully unified future for cross-channel measurement 

Our long-term vision is to give you a truly unified and simplified measurement experience that will enable you to confidently make advertising budget decisions. Starting with the launch of cross-channel budgeting plans, new capabilities will be added to the advertising section of Google Analytics over time, built exclusively on top of conversions – which is the foundation for cross-channel advertising measurement in Google Analytics. 

We’ve heard your feedback about what you need to make the most of your marketing budgets. So, we’ve planned some enhancements you can expect to see in the advertising section over the coming quarters:

• Measure all of your conversions in one place: we will add support for cross-channel app conversions in the next months, so all your important user actions will be measured in a single, unified system.
• Get a complete view of the consumer journey: you will be able to better understand how your marketing efforts work together to drive results with view-based interactions and full consumer journey metrics for more accurate insights across campaign types. 
• Analyze the customer journey across media touchpoints: Tap into new attribution reporting to understand which media platforms are driving demand versus actions. 
• Optimize media budgets across all of your channels with confidence: The addition of more conversions and view-based metrics will give you a more complete picture for cross-channel budget allocations so you can make better decisions about where to invest your marketing budget. 

What you can do right now to be ready

This unified future will make your measurement more powerful and your insights more actionable. Here’s what you can do right now to prepare for these updates and get the most out of Analytics:

1. Link your Google Ads accounts: Link your Google Ads and Google Marketing Platform accounts (Display & Video 360, Search Ads 360) to Google Analytics to unlock holistic measurement and new tools for optimizing your cross-channel ROI.
2. Set up your conversions:  Ensure you have set up the conversions that best represent your business goals in your Google Analytics property by visiting the manage conversions section. To get a full view of performance ensure your purchase data from your site, app and CRM are included in how you measure the ROI of your program.
3. Bring in your campaign data: Use our flexible import options including automated integrations with Meta, TikTok, Snap, Pinterest, and Reddit to bring in relevant cost and impression data with just a few clicks. 
4. Explore the new conversions section: Familiarize yourself with the new reports and tools in the Conversions section of the advertising section. 
5. Try the new cross-channel budgeting tools: If you have one year’s worth of web conversion data (backfilled with key event data) and campaign data, start using the new projections and scenario planner features to optimize your media spend. By taking these steps, you'll be in a strong position to take full advantage of our new measurement tools as they roll out.

Posted by Steve Ganem, Director, Product Management, Google Analytics

1. We are actively working to expand the availability of the new Conversions section to more properties. Reach out to your support team if you have questions about the eligibility of your property.