Slidedeck from the Digital Analytics Wednesday Presentation held on the 14th of June. Freddy, our Chief Innovation Officer, is speaking to us on the end of Universal Analytics and "new dawn" that is GA4. It doesn't sound melodramatic at all. ;) It will be cathartic and entertaining I'm sure as the looming deadline approaches.

1. Surviving the Analytics Apocalypse:
The Death of Universal Analytics and the
Rise of Google Analytics 4

2. Our Journey
1. The Birth & Life
2. The Death
3. The Grief
4. The Afterlife

3. The Birth & Life

4. Birth -GA Forged A (Learning) Path For Digital Analysts
At the beginning there was nothing Urchin

5. Life - An accessible tool
Universal Analytics got a few key things right. Let’s keep these valuable
lessons in mind

6. Life - We built our stacks based on its limitations

7. Life - Regulations are impacting countries across the globe
Google is adapting its products to fit new legal requirements, and reduce risk
of expensive lawsuits
Themes across regulatory developments:
● User transparency, controls and consent
● Data localisation and transfers
● Protecting kids and teens online
● Protection of sensitive groups and topics
(healthcare, gambling, etc.)
● Personalised ads restrictions

8. Life - Technology changes are restricting user-level tracking & identifiers
More and more web traffic becomes invisible or ends in the dark pit of direct
channel
Web
App
3P
2023
!
1994 2019 2019 2020 Now
2012-2013 2020 2021
Cookie is developed Browsers begin to
restrict 3P cookies
Chrome announces
Privacy Sandbox
Chrome announces plans to phase out
3P cookies (now planned for Q3’24)
Ecosystem is collaborating on
privacy-preserving alternatives
iDFA and AdID
introduced
Apple announced
restrictions for IDFA
Apple enforces
restrictions via ATT
framework
2022
Android announces
Privacy Sandbox on
Android initiative

9. Life - Measurement needs to adapt to new privacy expectations
PRIVACY TRENDS IMPLICATIONS FOR MARKETERS
Marketers will need to adapt their measurement to allow
for greater transparency and control
● Data redaction/anonymisation (ex: IP address)
● Data localisation
● Rigorous consent policies
Measurement will require a constellation of solutions to build
the durable foundation for conversion models
● User-provided 1P data (e.g., via Enhanced Conversions)
● Consent management (e.g., Consent Mode)
● 1P Cookies for more durable measurement
Marketers will need to collect and integrate first-party data at
a greater velocity and depth than before
● Rich value measurement to inform Smart Bidding
● Real time activation of measurement & audience
● Robust behavioral analytics in GA4
Increased regulation will demand
greater restrictions over how data is
used and shared
Technology changes will reduce the
signals available to advertisers for web
measurement
First party data will increase in
relevance as third party identifiers
become scarce

10. The Death

12. Google started to sunset tools
Google announced the sunset of Google Optimize.
It will no longer be available after September 30, 2023.
Google is collaborating on integrations with the following A/B
testing providers (listed in alphabetical order):
● AB Tasty
● Optimizely
● VWO

13. Death - A rushed product release
Still a lot of bugs outstanding
Source

14. Death -Jumpstart Migration is NOT Salvation
Can you guess when Jump Start was used? how long did it take us to
fix?

15. Death -Jumpstart Migration is NOT Salvation
Brief your whole team, mark as complete (even if you still have work to
do)

16. Death - Cardinality Issues
Cardinality Issues (i.e. number of unique values in a data set)

17. Death - Google ignoring tag firing rules when UA & GA are present
Classic Case: keep UA & GA4
● Don’t want to risk losing UA
● Wanted to use all the various categories you get with GA4
It worked fine for a few months, until it didn't
● Decided to have both UA and GA4 events
● With different syntax, clear ecomm each time, etc.. and
Google Ignores tag firing rules
● UA stripped out GA4 tag and replaced it with a
"converted" UA tag
● Done that for my add to cart and purchase too
Untangling this mess
● Go through the hassle of removing all the UA code
● Because google won't ignore it
Universal
Analytics
GA4

18. Death - A Community Losing Faith
Google Community Outreach team seems to be either overwhelmed or less
active. A lot of questions remain unanswered in Google Partner forums

19. The Fall of Free, Usable Analytics
And it’s a good thing.

20. The Grief

21. Grief - Help others understand the road ahead
Throw away the jargon, speak to a human, as a human, not as a data or
analytics specialist
50/100
0
25
50
75
100
80/100
our objective
your current
score
AREAS SCORE
Interactions 1/3
GA configuration 1/3
Conversion 2/3
Tracking code placement 3/3
GTM 1.5/3
DataLayers 0.5/3
RESOURCES REQUIRED:
● 2 b.end dev x 2 sprints
● 2 x 3hrs pre read and training

22. Grief - Some Support & Training by Google
Google (finally) gave some migration training and videos
Discord, Youtube playlist

23. Grief - A Community still ready to help
Be sure to give, and share. A thriving community relies on the effort of many

24. Grief - Tools like Checkmyanalytics.com can help
Our free tool built out of frustration of wasting time running basic analysis.
Tell us what other tests you’d like to run. We will add it to our roadmap.
Feel free to message me directly Frederic@checkmyanalytics.com
We do not keep your analytics data. Only info we keep is what google account was used and property analysed. We keep it to monitor volume and abuse.

25. Grief - Use Comparison dashboards
Reduce fear and anger - Show that the change in numbers is a tracking matter,
not a performance matter
Be the guide
● Quantify the impact on their business metrics
● Show them (many times) how they can do it to
Be the reassuring presence
● Remind people it’s a tracking thing
● Give examples on how to structure conversations with
senior mgmt and broader team
Be the rock
● Habits built over a decade are hard to break
● Expect 6-12 months of answering the same questions
● Repeat, repeat, repeat
Email me (frederic@checkmyanalytics.com) if you are
interested in having our team produce a report for you.

26. Grief - Work with HR to make training mandatory
Empower your business users to be self sufficient. Provide guidance (and
reassurance) along the way.

27. Grief - A silver lining
Google is working on a number of fixes and improvements to improve or at
least match UA functions
Link to full summary

28. The Afterlife

29. Afterlife - Heaven, Hell, Or Nirvana?
Salvation my reside in taking a different path

30. A Different Path - Matomo vs Google Analytics
Matomo has a very similar experience as Universal Analytics
Making adoption easier for your end users.

31. ● Created in 2007
● An Open Digital Analytics Platform: alternative to Google Analytics
● 1+ million websites
● Available in 50+ languages
● Free software under GPLv3 License
○ Commercial use
○ Modification
○ Distribution
○ Patent use and private use
○ https://github.com/matomo-org/matomo
● List of features
● Powerful premiers features: see marketplace
● Demo: https”//demo.matomo.org
What is Matomo Analytics?
If your business needs are more complex, I recommend reaching out to the Snowplow team
Best for companies looking for a simple analytics solution with the same
look and feel as Universal Analytics.

32. A Free or inexpensive alternative
If you have limited dev resources, we recommend the cloud hosted solution.
P.S: we get no comms on this recommendation. We just think

33. MAIN MENU / HOMEPAGE / SEARCH BOX
● When logging in to Analytics tool a summary of main metrics and dimensions is showed, in Matomo
Analytics this is customised. In all tools there is a search box to search for reports and help content.
● From the main menu it is possible to access the four main blocks of data: audience, acquisition,
behaviour and conversion.

34. AUDIENCE / VISITORS
● The Audience / Visitors reports provide insight into characteristics of the users. Similar data is
collected about recurrency, devices detail or user location

35. ACQUISITION
● The Acquisition reports provide insight about channels and campaigns.

36. BEHAVIOUR
● The behaviour reports provide insight about site content and user interactions

37. CONVERSIONS > ECOMMERCE
● The behaviour reports provide insight about site content and user interactions

38. CONVERSIONS > GOALS
● The behaviour reports provide insight about site
content and user interactions
●

39. ADMIN

40. MATOMO MARKETPLACE
● Plugins to add new functionalities and reports to
Matomo Analytics
https://plugins.matomo.org/

41. MATOMO INTEGRATIONS

42. MATOMO INTEGRATIONS

43. MATOMO INTEGRATIONS

44. Saving Universal Analytics data in your warehouse
Objective
Minimise impact on the teams’ analytics
capabilities while migrating to a new
analytics platform.
Implement Matomo to ensure data
continuity and reporting capabilities while
respecting best practices with the ongoing
support of analytics specialists.
Key Deliverables
● Solution Design / Implementation Plan
● Matomo Implementation
● Documentation
● Training on fundamentals
Strategy

45. Maintain Consistency after the sunset of Universal Analytics
What are the main 2 goals we want to achieve?
Save historical data and store it in your BigQuery data
warehouse.
4
Provide a solution for the team to be able to access, explore
and visualise data from both UA and GA4.
1. Save data 2. Consolidate data

46. Connecting data to your data warehouse
Your data warehouse setup would have the following overall structure.
4 4
Data sources Transform data Store data Visualise & activate data
Phase 2
Phase 1
Google Analytics (UA&GA4)
Matomo
Google BigQuery

47. EXPORT TRANSFORM LOAD & JOIN VISUALISE
Universal Analytics
Historical Data using
Cleansing, standardisation
and mapping of UA data
with GA4
Google Analytics 4 New
Data using native
integration
Limited transformation
required for GA4
4
BigQuery
ML
Cloud AI
Cloud ML
Engine
Cloud
Storage
Dataflow
Cloud Composer
ANALYSE &
TRANSFORMATION
NEXT PHASES

48. COMPARISON TABLE
Data WareHouse MySQL + BigQuery BigQuery Sheets + Bigquery
Difficulty / Complexity 5/5 4/5 4/5
Team Involvement Moderate High High
Data Storage & query Costs <100-$500/month <$100/month <$100/month
Estimated effort to build 4-6 weeks 4-6 weeks 4-6 weeks
Pros
● Built-in analytics dashboards available to visualise and explore UA data
once exported
● Data self-service; host analytics data on your own servers
● All UA data is exported
● Matomo can be set up as a secondary analytics tool for Globus team to
use.
● Data is fully formatted
● Data Studio connector makes easy blending with multiple
data sources
● Easily create custom reports and add different segments.
● Data is fully formatted
● Easy to upload of data into the cloud
● Google Analytics Google Sheets Add-on is free
Cons
● No Data Studio BigQuery connector
● Requires formatting, standardisation and mapping of UA data with GA4
● Requires data wrangling to combine with other sources for visualisations
and reports
● Supermetrics BigQuery connectors for Google Analytics
and Data Studio are priced separately
● Separate BigQuery jobs for historical data backfill*
● The exported data is limited to what the team defines
● Requires formatting, standardisation and mapping of UA
data with GA4
● Google Sheets limitations apply
● The exported data is limited to what the team
defines
● Separate BigQuery jobs for historical data backfill
● Requires formatting, standardisation and mapping
of UA data with GA4

49. An Opportunity to teach the world about analytics

50. Rebuild from the ground up, with
solid foundations
The very boring but essential story to get right. Luckily for
us in Aus. Boards are starting to care about data gov.
Governance
Tech Support &
Innovation
Reporting &
Dashboarding
Strategic
Consulting
Strategic consulting
Digital Marketing strategy, execution, training,
workshops
Reporting & Dashboarding
Performance reports and self-service dashboards that
lead to data-driven decision making
Governance
Processes, templates, frameworks to help the team use
the data in efficient and consistent ways
Implementation
Implementation of new features/measurements within
your current/new ecosystem

51. Engage the broader team across Digital Analytics governance pillars to
improve team accountability, and efficiency
Governance
Guidelines, recurring
task lists, record
tracking
Governance
Measurement
Plan
Regular training
sessions, team
workshops,
educational hub
Training
Tagging tools,
Standard naming
conventions,
monitoring campaign
tagging
Campaign
Tracking
Data
Maintenance
Reports &
Dashboards
GTM
Governance
Roles & permissions,
user policies
User
Management
User
Experience
Overview
Version control,
change logs,
annotations
Notable Events
Naming conventions,
guidelines, tag
monitoring, regular
updates
Library of available
dashboards and
reports
Documented
business objectives,
KPIs, targets, existing
measurements
Monitoring and
processes ensuring
data quality, accuracy
and integrity
Defined and
documented key user
journeys,
conversions,
interactions,
definitions

52. Godspeed on
our journey in this
brave new world
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