Google Analytics 4

Overview

Convert Experiences now has an official functional integration with the Google Analytics 4 (GA4) platform. This is based on Google’s integration API documents, the specifications of which have been developed by Google with the kind cooperation of its Cloud partners. 

1. GA4 has 100 Audiences (slots) per property. And these will be used by the official Audiences API to bucket users for each experiment variant in your preferred testing platform (in this case, Convert Experiences). GA4 360 comes with 400 Audiences per property. 

2. Convert Experiences will connect via a GA4 connector (based on OAuth 2.0 through https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/reporting/core/v4/authorization) to the new GA4 “Experiences” or as Google calls it: Audiences API (the alpha version).

3. In Convert Experiences, the integration can be turned ON at the Project level (Project > Configuration) to connect to GA4 at the Property level, using the official Google Analytics Admin API Connector. This connector then checks if there are enough free Audiences available for Convert Experiences to proceed, and suggests testers to free up more “Audience slots” if there are none available. 

4. For each experience (Deploys and Experiments in the Convert Experiences app) we respect the Project > Configuration setting. When it’s enabled for a Project, each subsequently created experience in that project will also have this turned ON by default. 

5. On Activation and Archiving of an experience (Experiment or Deploy), Convert Experiences will make contact with the Google Analytics Admin API for Audiences and create or remove an Audience in GA4. 

6. Convert Experiences will send two things: 
   • An event with name experience_impression
   • The above event will have a property called exp_variant_string = CONV-[EXPERIENCE ID]-[VARIATION ID], first number is the actual experience ID and second is the actual variation ID. 

7. This Audience with the events ExperimentID and VariationID will be visible in GA4 under Audiences, Explore, and Reporting and will be available to export to BigQuery (from Google Analytics)

8. If the GA4 token expires, and the user is not logged into GA4, we request a new token and seek consent to create and or remove the Audience IDs. 

The storage of the Google Analytics oAuth 2.0 authentication token is currently set at 1 hour as set by Google AUTH side.  This guarantees the security of the Google Analytics system and brings transparency to the generation of new Audiences. The process is visually displayed inside Convert Experiences and our customers can view at any stage how our app is creating and using Audiences. 

Ongoing Updates to Google’s API: 

Since the integration Google Analytics Audience API is the alpha version, there might be changes introduced by Google. Once this happens Convert will also update the integration to always offer the latest options to the platform. We believe that Google’s aim is to allow all displaced Optimize users to work with their tool of choice, without technological barriers, and that any updates will be communicated to 3rd party A/B testing partners. 

We will be on top of any API adjustments required to keep improving your data analysis for better experimentation.