Google delays sunsetting Universal Analytics until summer 2024

KEY CHANGES

Going forwards, Google will solely invest and increase resourcing to develop GA4. Beginning in 2024, maintenance improvements to Universal Analytics 360 will be wound down, and on July 1, 2024, Universal Analytics 360 will stop processing new hits.  It is important to note that the Universal Analytics sunset date for all standard properties will remain July 1, 2023, including standard properties in accounts with 360 properties.

WHAT’S OUR POINT OF VIEW?

This new deadline will give enterprise customers, who often have complex Universal Analytics implementations, more time to complete their migration to GA4. Our recommendation is for our clients and agency partners to remain focused on the shift to GA4 and leverage this additional time to dual deploy, test the platform, and train their teams.

FIVE STEPS TO PREPARE FOR A PRIVACY-FOCUSED FUTURE

It’s important to review where you are now on your privacy journey and where you want to get to. By assessing your current systems, procedures, and data workflows you can identify areas to improve.

Here are our five steps that brands can focus on to prepare for a privacy-focused future:  

1. Define your strategy
   Create an operational assessment and audit to identify what practices are in place for first-party data capture and management. This will give you clarity on where you are on your data journey.  It will help you uncover gaps and prioritize where you need to focus your time and effort.  Develop a privacy strategy, including an assessment of the impact of cookie deprecation on your activation and measurement.  Create a roadmap of how your marketing capabilities can evolve in light of increasing privacy regulations.
   
2. Set up your technology
   Develop a Cloud (e.g. Google Cloud Platform) first approach for connecting, modelling, measuring, and activation through the Google Marketing Platform (GMP) and other ad-tech or mar-tech platforms. Ensure you collect first-party data across all touch points and reduce reliance on third-party data. Set up the right tools for privacy-ready activation and measurement, such as CAPI and GA4.
3. Data activation
   Develop your plan for first-party activation including how to use custom algorithms, customer match activation and value-based bidding.
4. Set up a robust measurement framework
   Review your measurement strategy and explore privacy-ready approaches such as marketing mix modelling, incrementality experiments and regression-based attribution  
5. Prepare your teams:
   Bring your people with you on your privacy journey. Data and tech alone won’t prepare your brand for a privacy-focused future. Once you have run a capability assessment and set up your operating model ensure your teams have the resources and processes to drive a privacy-first agenda. This may require new ways of working and new responsibilities. Adopt agile methodology to enable you to work iteratively and adapt to evolving privacy developments.

DISCOVER MORE

For more information, you can read the Google blog and announcement.

CONNECT WITH US

We’ll continue to support clients to navigate the ever-changing technology landscape, and we’re here to support brands on what this news means for their business. Email us if you have questions: contact@acceleration.biz