Google Analytics 4 (GA-4) incorporates new artificial intelligence functions for media audience managers and other marketing and advertising professionals. Among these new intelligent options, AI would detect patterns or anomalies that reveal the reasons why our web traffic increases or decreases.
It is curious how an advertising giant like Google is letting itself be carried away by the novelties of ChatGPT, instead of imitating, at least in part, the B2B journey towards artificial intelligence promoted by MICROSOFT.
At the last Google I/O developer conference, ALPHABET was not in vain more interested in showing us everything that GEMINI can do in each of its products, instead of focusing on a value proposition and a clear market segment.
If your core business is advertising, why not embed all generative innovation there?
In May, however, Google Marketing Live did show how AI can help advertisers in their advertising campaigns, but also in other tools, especially measurement tools.
Google Analytics 4 (GA-4), the successor to the now-defunct GA and GA 360, announced that it would incorporate artificial intelligence for better measurement of ad campaigns, traffic and conversions. A few days ago, it made these new features official on its corporate blog.
Despite focusing on advertising professionals, these innovations in GA-4 can also be seen by audience managers in the News sector, although they use the tool almost automatically.
GA-4 adds AI-generated predictions
What’s coming to Google Analytics 4? These are a series of predictive features ( generated insights ) that can alert the chief engineer about metrics, both user behavior before they occur, and traffic spikes or drops.
Basically, as we can see in the image below, they are insights generated by AI that pop up like information cards in GA-4 events, when something anomalous occurs (for better or worse).
What kind of predictions can AI provide in GA4?
Thus, AI in GA4 can provide the following predictions:
- Traffic trends
- User behavior
- Campaign performance
- Anomalies
How does AI detect patterns and trends in GA-4?
Google Analytics 4 (GA-4) AI thus has the ability to analyze large volumes of data and detect such patterns and trends, which might not be apparent to data analysts at a glance.
In this way, an increase in visits on a specific device in a specific geographic region would be alerted in order to adjust strategies to these trends.
GA-4 AI also identifies abnormalities
Furthermore, GA-4’s AI can also discover anomalies in data, to point out problems or threat areas.
When there is a sudden drop in traffic on our site, Audience Managers could access possible causes and solutions (technical problems, changes in user behavior) in order to correct them as soon as possible.
In both cases, whether it is an upward trend or anomaly, these new AI-powered features are more geared towards advertising and marketing campaigns, but they can be a warning when managing GA-4 from the other side of the pier, the publishers.
GA-4 automates tasks with the help of AI
AI can automate many of the tasks that previously required manual analysis, saving time and reducing the risk of human error. We could, for example, set up custom alerts, which notify of important changes in key metrics such as:
- Traffic
- Conversion rates
- User behavior
Google finally reminds that these AI functions are only active in GA-4, since Universal Analytics (GUA) and Google Analytics 360 (GA 360) stopped showing data as of July 1, 2024.
