Universal Analytics end of Life Dates Announced. Is the Sky falling?

In Digital Analytics, not a week has gone by in the last year without a discussion about the withdrawal of support for google analytics (UA) and the other side of that particular coin :? implementing Google Analytics version 4.??

This week was no different. This time the?speculation came via one of the many digital marketing groups I belong to. However... this time it was backed up a day later with the end of life date from Google.?So now it’s official – businesses relying on Universal Analytics won’t receive any new data from 01 July 2023!?

Let’s a have a think about what that actually means for?digital analytics teams.???

To put the discussion into some context, let me bring you up to speed on some important background leading us up to this point. ?

Background??

• Most digital teams have been running Universal Analytics on their website. We can call this version 3 or UA for short. Version 4 (v4) has been made available for over 12 months has been born out of a platform previously called ‘App + web’. That should give you an idea of increased capabilities of v4?
• If you have created a google analytics property in recent months you have, by default been asked to create a version 4 account. Universal Analytics account users have been offered a chance to upgrade their account, but it’s not actually an upgrade. It’s a parallel implementation of the new platform for reasons we will get into later.??
• The change has come about for a variety of reasons surrounding privacy, cookie depreciation changing ways that we use the internet and a whole lot more. Frankly, UA is getting a little long in the tooth for today’s digital world. ?
• Analyst forums have been sharing bits of intel around the end date of UA for a while. As I previously mentioned, speculation has been rife but we never had hard dates to work from... until now. ?

?What’s the big deal about another version??

Analytics v4 is unlike any other version that has gone before. Some of the previous versions have been minor by comparison and could be mistaken for upgrades to the tracking code or UX changes. V4 is a complete rethink and rebuild from the ground up.? The pageview + event model found in UA is gone and now everything is essentially an event.??

The data model comes with much more flexibility for expert users but the downside is that there is increased?complexity added to simple tasks. Significantly, your data history and configuration from previous versions will not continue – so there’s a lot of work for a lot of people to re-platform.

Let that sink in. You can’t take Universal Analytics data with you into version 4, so benchmarking and things like YTD comparisons means straddling two platforms. ?

By comparison with UA, there are few out of the box reports for everyday users so pretty much everything needs to be built from the ground up.

I expect we will see an influx of out report suites in the coming months with more and more of Google dev team switching to ‘team v4’ but I may be wrong.??

?Key dates.??

The following dates were made clear on the google blog only this morning.??

• 01 July 2023.? No new hits to be processed for regular accounts?
• 01 October 2023. No new hits to be processed for 360 accounts.???
• Your data will be made available for over 6 months after that date.??

So, is the sky falling??

This largely depends on your outlook and the extent to which you have been across this already. While some digital managers have been planning the transition for some time, other have been slow to act. As a minimum it’s a good idea to start collect v4 data now to minimise any impact on benchmarking down the line.?

As you may have gathered, leveraging the full benefit of analytics in the same way as its predecessors required considerably more effort. It’s best to scope this out against your measurement plan, objectives and reporting requirements.??

Some digital managers are using this as the chance to step back, reset and look at the bigger picture, allowing them to look at other analytics platforms such as Adobe with fresh eyes. ?

What happens to all my Google Data Studio dashboards and reports??

If the datasource you are using is GAv4 then you have little to worry about.? If your underlying data source is a UA property, then now is the time start thinking about planning for the switch.??

Snooze and you will lose!

If you haven't already, review your analytics platform of choice. Your next analytics platform needs some careful consideration as it will need to work alongside and enable greater levels of personalisation and customer loyalty than ever before.

If you decide to stick with Google, then implement Google Analytics v4 as soon as possible to start collecting future benchmarking data today.

·??????Capture the basics first and start to think about the additional metrics you will be needing to use.?

·??????Review the settings in your new GAv4 property, especially the data retention settings! The default is only 2 months.??

July 2023 may seem a long time away, but June this year is just 2-months from now!! To factor in seasonality, you’ll likely want to have at least a year of historic data - hence the urgency to act now.

?Digital marketers must act immediately to ensure they can accurately inform future business decisions. Snooze and your business will lose!