It had to happen, sooner or later. The latest decision made by the CNIL may have sped up things a little bit. Anyway, Google officially announced they will put an end to Universal Analytics, the market-leading analytics solution, the one we've all been used to work with for years. Universal Analytics will come to an end on July 1st, 2023 (September 30th for users of the 360 version). But, all in all, concretely, what does it mean? From July 1st, 2023, no more data will be recorded by Google Analytics in its Universal Analytics solution. Stats won't appear anymore, as simple as that! This means, migrating to the Google Analytics 4, the version that's been in beta for quite a while now, will become mandatory. It should also be noted that, from July 2023, you will have access the analytics data historic for a period of only six months!

GA4 is a completely different tool compared to the Google Analytics we know and use today. The implementation methods are different, the interface is different, ... 

GA4 is really built around events while Google Analytics, as we know it today, Universal Analytics, is based around sessions and users. This means that, the way we create a strategy, the way we implement tags on a website... needs to be completely revamped. It will have a massive impact because the predicted workload to manage this transition is huge. We highly recommend companies to start undertaking actions as soon as possible!

Here too, everything will need a reboot! The impact on data fetching and conversions is big. To guarantee a seamless transition, it is very important to set up new conversions and new audiences ASAP in order to feed the Google Ads algorithms with up-to-date and relevant data. This will minimize the impact on smart bidding strategies thus guaranteeing stable performance across your Google solutions. Plus, Artificial Intelligence and Consent Mode have been introduced to surpass traditional attribution methods and improve lost data recovery caused by GDPR and cookies banners.

Here too, everything will need a reboot! The impact on data fetching and conversions is big. To guarantee a seamless transition, it is very important to set up new conversions and new audiences ASAP in order to feed the Google Ads algorithms with up-to-date and relevant data. This will minimize the impact on smart bidding strategies thus guaranteeing stable performance across your Google solutions. Plus, Artificial Intelligence and Consent Mode have been introduced to surpass traditional attribution methods and improve lost data recovery caused by GDPR and cookies banners.

GA4 is a new version that will offer more protection than Universal Analytics regarding data privacy. For example, IP addresses will be automatically anonymized which wasn't the case with Universal Analytics, we had to do it ourselves in the tagging setups. It's very likely that Google Analytics will try to enforce this new version among companies to really focus on being compliant. We have to remind that, currently, Google Analytics is under pressure because they do export and analyze data outside of Europe, in the United States, which means, according to the CNIL, that the current version of Google Analytics is not GDPR-compliant. But of course, there are other tools nowadays such as Matomo Analytics that we can use jointly with Google Analytics, just in case. 

While the finale deadline is scheduled for July 2023, anticipation is key, and actions should be undertaken ASAP. Web Analytics are evolving, we need to evolve with them!