What you need to know:

• Tightening privacy regimes – primarily in Europe – are forcing Google to change the way it tracks and measures web traffic.
• Hence GA4, the new analytics system that replaced Universal Analytics as of 1 July, though three weeks after its supposed shutdown is still being used.
• But it’s a very different system and user interface, leaving marketers stumped.
• Meanwhile, concerns over GDPR compliance in Europe have led swathes of corporates to switch providers – because they are at serious risk of heavy fines, with France's regulator now taking an aggressive stance against brands and publishers as well as tech firms.
• A new agreement over data transfer to the US has been inked, but is set for a fresh legal challenge by the group, NOYB, that got the last agreement torn up, causing many of the problems that Google and other tech behemoths have spent three years trying to solve.
• Either way, digital marketers and consultants – and those touting alternative analytics solutions – think brands should start running parallel systems as Australia moves to beef-up its own privacy regime.
• Own your own data, is the mantra, and prepare for the fragmentation of walled gardens.
• Listen to the podcast here.

Tightening privacy regimes – primarily in Europe – are forcing Google to change the way it tracks and measures web traffic. That’s led Universal Analytics to be replaced by GA4. The problem is, it’s an entirely different product. That fact, combined with stricter rules on how people’s data is used, stored and transferred is leading vast swathes of enterprise companies across Europe to weigh-up alternative analytics providers, such as Matomo or Piano. (Disclosure: Mi3 works with Piano for sign-ins and content recommendations and other analytics providers in parallel with Google Analytics).

In France, Piano’s Marie Fenner - which is one of a handful of alternatives to Google Analytics (GA) - suggests about half of enterprise companies are pulling out of the Google analytics stack as a result. Matomo is another fast growing global alternative to GA and Chief Revenue Officer Dion Blair says circa 90 per cent of French firms have reviewed or are reviewing their analytics stack as regulators start to ramp up enforcement.

So what? Australia is not Europe. But the incoming privacy overhaul will more closely align the two regimes. Which means many of the same challenges will soon be here.

Even before that, says Matomo's Blair, GA4 is making marketers very “cranky” – because it’s really hard to use, and doesn’t do the same things. Jason Elk is head of performance marketing for Westfield parent, Scentre Group and previously held a similar role at Nine driving social and search users to the media giant's diverse content offers. Elk's assessment of the current market situation is a personal view not pre-vetted or endorsed before publishing by Scentre Group. But he thinks the current market ructions threaten Google’s once unquestionable dominance of the analytics market – and by default the “foot in the door” to pull businesses into the broader Google stack.

“Over the last 20 years, Google established itself as the go-to analytics platform," says Elk. "It opened up the ability to have a single conversation around metrics. No matter which company you’re working for, or what your objectives are, we were all able to open the same platform and dashboard and have the same conversation.”

But then from 1 July, Google forced a move to GA4 (though paying enterprise users of its paid 360 product suite have another year to run).

“That’s left a lot of people like me scratching our heads about why Google has chosen to completely depart from the interface and the ease of use in the UI, and UX, that have become synonymous with using web analytics,” adds Elk.

“I think the reason so many of us have issues is really down to a few elements. The first is the UI, the usability and the ability to get the things that we've always got from Google Analytics are … in some cases impossible to get, unless you exporting data into Looker [Google’s dashboarding and data visualisation suite], or you are creating 'explorations' which in itself is quite an exploration or, or you're parsing data out to Big Query [Google’s data warehouse],” says Elk.

“All of this is doable. The question is whether it's something that the average user knows how to do, wants to do, and can be bothered to do,” he adds. “I’ve spoken with [firms] who are rethinking their set up at this point. And I think that's the change that has started to happen. People are thinking ‘actually, maybe I don't need one stack of the same tools for everything I use. Maybe I need something else that better suits my needs for analytics – and that doesn't mean that I have to stop Google Ads. It just means that I start using things that can do what I need them to do’.”

Scentre Group, says Elk, is working through the challenges posed by GA4 “and doing everything we need to do to build the future in GA4”. But he thinks smaller business, including some of the retailers that operate out of its Westfield stores, may now be reviewing other providers.

“They are reliant on GA4 working just like they rely on email … unless you have the resources or time or inclination to dive into how to achieve the same things you used to, I believe it’s worth looking at alternatives.”

Overblown?

Elk thinks suggestions of an ‘existential threat’ to Google’s broader business as a result of the shift to GA4 is overblown. But he thinks it may lose some share.

“Google’s not going to go out of business by any means … Bigger companies will do what they need to do to get the results they need. But it has got people to lift their heads and ask whether there is something better than Google Analytics out there,” says Elk. “The minute that starts fragmenting – I’m using Matomo, you’re using Google Analytics, somebody else is using something else and we all start comparing [different] sessions and events between companies – that starts to threaten the foothold that Google has had for a very long time. It was the default, whereas now … it’s less threatening for a small business owner to find something [else] that does the job.”

Market moving

That shift is well underway in the UK, according to Charlie Penwarden, a UK-based analytics specialist at Rank Robin who advises clients including AstraZeneca and Fendi. He says “about 50 per cent of our client roster” have switched away from Google Analytics.

“The thing I’ve been mentioning most is that if you are not paying for the product, you are the product,” he says, paraphrasing a truism of the digital age.

“For nearly 20 years, Google has been selling off, auctioning and brokering user data from their platform,”adds Penwarden. “Word on the street is that there has been some significant threats by governments … to really change the model and how Google works when it comes to data analytics – driven by GDPR.”

Hence, he says the advent of GA4, which Google launched in beta in 2019 in a bid to comply with GDPR, but which several countries’ regulators, notably France and Austria have previously ruled as “illegal”, with Dutch, Swedish and Norwegian authorities also stating it is GDPR non-compliant due primarily to US data transfer, where most of its servers are sited. (More on data transfer later.)

The problem for brands, aside from fear of potential legal issues, says Penwarden, is that GA4 is “an entirely different product, an entirely different model” from Universal Analytics they have been using to date. Which is causing some to jump ship.

“What we are seeing from clients that are running a lot of their marketing activity in the Google ecosystem is this natural affinity for Google. But those that aren't, it's really quite an easy transition to move them away from the Google suite,” says Penwarden.

“I understand why Google has done this … to adhere to GDPR … but [for brands the forced switch] been a bit of a minefield for a number of reasons, usability being one of the biggest ones. But also the data sampling aspect,” says Penwarden. (Like its predecessor, GA4 uses data sampling – running the numbers on a subset of data and extrapolating it out – for advanced reports above a certain number of sessions.)

“Data sampling is marketing speak for … estimating data,” says Penwarden. “But clients need accuracy of data: they've got millions of pounds worth of revenue going through their ecommerce stores every week.”

‘Sessions’ to ‘events’: A problem

Penwarden says the biggest headache for marketers grappling with the new system is the shift from ‘sessions’ to ‘events’. Previously, in Universal Analytics a ‘hit’ – any type of interaction on a site – was broken down into different categories: page views, events, transactions/e-commerce etc. In GA4, every hit is packaged as an ‘event’. Users can drill down into these events and still find much of that data. But it’s a different interface to navigate, some categories have been replaced – i.e. bounce rates are now engagement rates – and the data collection is different, i.e. sampling versus third party cookies. Plus the attribution models have changed and for ecommerce metrics reports in GA4 are less granular.

“That’s the fundamental disconnect my clients are struggling to get their heads around in terms of the usability and the insights [previously] gained from session reporting,” says Penwarden. “We shouldn't be looking at the data … from GA4 the same way … The market shouldn’t really be comparing the two products.”

Hence “probably 50 per cent” of his clients switching away. Does that level of movement represent an existential threat to Google’s analytics dominance? Penwarden doesn’t go that far.

“But I think it's an existential challenge for marketers, data analysts and people who have been able to pull insights quite quickly and easily from Google to drive forward marketing actions, to improve conversion rate optimisation and things like that.”

Which is why he’s advising marketers to seek out alternatives. For larger brands, that means using analytics products within experience platforms such as Adobe, Hubspot, Contentsquare, per Penwarden, “and not looking at analytics in a silo, so that they can get maximum return from their analytics investment [within those platforms] and operate with the data a lot more easily.”

For smaller brands, “we found that Matomo was the closest tool to Universal Analytics in terms of usability, functionality and bang for your buck – and that's been the smoothest transition away”, says Penwarden. “They have absolutely nailed the privacy side of things … So it’s reporting session data like Universal Analytics does … there is anonymity there … But it's not got that drastic change in UI and [reliance on] data sampling, etc., that GA4 has had.”

GDPR forcing change

Analytics provider Piano is seeing a similar level of movement away from Google in Europe, particularly in France, where Marie Fenner, the firm’s Global Senior Vice President, Analytics, is based.

“We’re seeing a huge shift,” she says. “In Europe, at least 80 per cent of [larger] companies have properly evaluated the market and gone to market with RFPs and RFIs – of which I think 60 per cent have made a move with the rest deciding to stay [with GA4] a little longer and see if they can make it work … It’s been phenomenal.”

She agrees that the issue is two-fold: businesses aren’t happy with the new set up and are concerned about privacy, with regulators now making good on threats and starting to dish out chunky fines.

“In France, the Data Protection Authority, CNIL, is really cracking down, companies are receiving final warning letters,” says Fenner.

Plus, while the EU and US in July agreed a reworked deal that enables data flows from the EU to the US – the EU-US Data Privacy Framework – some members of the European Parliament are not happy with it. They think it still leaves the door open to surveillance of EU citizens by US intelligence agencies – the main reason the last version of the agreement, the so called Privacy Shield was ripped up in 2020 following a successful legal challenge by privacy campaigner Max Schrems.

That ruling ultimately led to Meta in May being fined €1.2bn and warned to stop transferring European user data to the US. Schrems says he’s now going after the latest accord: “We currently expect this to be back at the [European] Court of Justice by the beginning of next year,” per Schrems, with the organisation he co-founded, NOYB, simultaneously pursuing hundreds of legal challenges against Silicon Valley majors as well as banks, publishers, telcos and many more, claiming their data policies violate GDPR. (Its latest win was against Criteo in June – the retargeting firm couldn’t prove it had valid consent to use people’s data and was duly fined €40m by CNIL, something Australian brands and the media supply chain should note, given the Privacy Act overhaul.)

While Google insists its products comply with GDPR and is “firmly privacy safe”, the uncertainty – with publishers and brands in the line of fire and facing fines for breaches – remains a main driver of change, says Fenner. “There is a market saying ‘does that mean I can still continue to use Google Analytics?’ and other people saying ‘not quite’. So there are companies even of this week going to market [for alternative analytics].”

Events, gaps, lack of control

Fenner agrees with Charlie Penwarden and Scentre Group’s Jason Elk that the shift to ‘events’ in GA4 and the change of user interface is also a driver in companies seeking alternatives.

“Events-based [measurement] is quite a fundamental shift. I’ve been in analytics for 20 years, and for me it was really exciting stuff … GA4 does allow you to have more events, more dimensions. But then you realise that certain things are available as data collection, but not actually available in the user interface … You're not getting a URL in a way [that enables you] to export the data into Big Query [Google’s data warehouse]. So then, the monetisation of Google starts from there,” per Fenner. “So I think that left a bitter taste in the mouth – that extra excitement of event-based analytics … but then not being able to get to [those] essential insights.”

Another overall factor in driving businesses to rethink their data operations is the demise of third party cookies. Along with data privacy concerns, that is leading firms to re-architect their systems and processes.

“I think people realise they need to take back control …  and own the data themselves … So they are now creating their own data warehouses, data platform, clean rooms, etc. So we will see that move away from walled gardens, creating that independence,” says Fenner.

Cranky marketers

Matomo Chief Revenue Officer, Dion Blair, says the firm is seeing exactly the same drivers as Piano’s Fenner. Matomo’s business has rocketed 500 per cent in the last three years, driven largely by European and US-based firms seeking privacy-compliant analytics. It is now tracking analytics on circa 1.5 million websites worldwide. Blair says the enforced shift to GA4 has “compelled” millions of users “from something that they loved, to leave it behind. That's a big reason to be cranky. Because it's been under duress.” While Google served notice of its intent to shutter Universal Analytics in March 2022, “it was never, ever sufficient enough to have conditioned the expectations for what the new landscape looks like”, per Blair.

“The second reason for the crankiness is that they forced marketing professionals into a space that that many of us don't enjoy – and that's a time-poor space, to have to learn something new, in a change management environment, where you may not necessarily have the access to resources, and most importantly, the access to budget in which to be able to bring in the experts,” says Blair. He suggests even some the Google specialist consultants “are battling a wee bit with trying to get the simplicity of this up and running – and that in itself poses a conundrum”.

Blair thinks the third “and probably most important of the of the reasons for crankiness is that it's an entirely different platform.”

But even for firms that have invested the time and effort to get to grips with all of that, says Blair, the questions over whether GA4 is fully GDPR compliant are problematic.

“France, very recently, has completely and utterly rejected the IP address anonymisation function as being an adequate measure for protecting data transfer from Europe to the US. So as much as you would pick GA4 up out of the box, and it will tell you that it's completely GDPR compliant now… you've got people that have made that move who are probably scratching their heads going ‘I thought we'd done this,’” says Blair.

“At the core of this is data. Ultimately, that data is owned by the business owner … [who has] generated that data in the first place. There's a shift change in doing the right thing with customers data. You've now got people in a position where they think they've made a transition to doing the right thing with that data, but now they're not so sure. That must be an awful position for marketing professionals or any business professional to be in. So that's the essence of where I see crankiness.”

Which is why business is booming for the likes of Matomo and Piano. “Because the data ownership isn't in question then,” says Blair. “Okay, you go through the clunk of learning a new platform. But you're having to do that anyway [with GA4].” Meanwhile, the threat of multimillion dollar fines in Europe is starting to become uncomfortably real. “[Businesses] are really being forced to make a choice. Right now I'd suggest that unlike any time in the past 15 years, we're seeing that choice is potentially not the big behemoth.”

Data sampling: Not your data?

Blair says many clients do not realise the extent to which Google is sampling data, and then using that cutaway to feed its advertising intelligence machine. Google strongly denies this is the case, in June telling Mi3:

“Google Analytics is a processor product – [Google] customers own and control the data collected on their properties and Google does not use this data other than to protect and provide the service," per an Australian spokesperson. "Even when customers explicitly enable data sharing with Google, that data is not used for our own marketing or ad targeting purposes."

Blair, a former Detective Sergeant with the NZ Police and private investigator, remains unconvinced.

“That is why [GA] has been able to be a free analytics tool for so long, because basically, the wing of that business generates advertising revenue based on the algorithms that they get from sampling data,” he says.

“And that's why the open source piece has become so huge. Because … when you're in UA, or when you're in GA4, you don't own the data, it's their data, [Google] are the gatekeeper,” he adds. “So what you get at the end of it is yours, but the sampling – and I didn't really realise the extent of it – but in clients, we've seen the sampling, as in the cutaway that can be looked at and worked on from an advertising algorithmic perspective, can be as high as 60 per cent,” says Blair.

"We know, for a fact, when some of our clients have run GA side-by-side with Matomo, that has been the difference in data return that they discovered," he adds. "That's a lot of data."

Blair underlines the point, and is sceptical of Google's statements that it is not using GA data within its broader advertising business.

"It's easier for us to just believe what the 'big guy' tells us because after all, they're the big guy," states Blair. "[But] this position of them holding form to 'untruths' is becoming harder to hold as the facts, when scratched beneath the surface, tell a different story."

He says marketers, or businesses more broadly, can look at sampling as a way to speed up results, given the volume of data Google processes for businesses that need web analytics. Or they can view it as “the sampling that occurs is actually a cutaway of your data … to [drive] richer advertising algorithms”. Marketers, says Blair, “would be foolish not to indulge in the very rich advertising analytics that come from Google Ads. But they get those analytics by means of the fact [Google] own your data.”

Church and state: separation ahead?

Scentre Group’s Jason Elk thinks “separation of church and state” between Google’s businesses is required.

“How Google achieves that I don't really know. As an advertiser, I still need to be able to use Google Ads. But that doesn't mean that I need to be paying the price of letting them own all my data either,” per Elk. “There can be a world where I can own all my data, dive into it and use it as much as I like while still benefiting from Google Advertising.”

Piano’s Marie Fenner implies that Google may ultimately be forced into a church and state model. Because while the EU-US Data Privacy Framework has now been signed off (legal challenges notwithstanding), “there is still that problem of measuring what's strictly necessary, and data minimisation.”

“So if you are collecting the data for a specific purpose, let's say audience measurement, web analytics, and you use it for that particular purpose and you obtain [web user] consent, everybody's happy,” says Fenner. “But if you start collecting the data, and use it for something else – to power your advertising or a different part of the commercial business [for example] – then it becomes a problem.”

Overblown?

Not everyone thinks Google’s in trouble. Gary Nissim, head of specialist search agency Indago Digital, suggests GA4 is a necessary response to tightening privacy regimes, reduces Google's reliance on sampling and says his clients are getting to grips with the new product.

“We are not seeing a massive push away from the tool,” says Nissim.“What we're seeing now is exactly what we saw when Google launched Universal Analytics. First there's panic: ‘What is this saying? How does it work? It's not as good’. Then there's an understanding as people are getting used to it. I think eventually we’ll see a moment where people are genuinely thrilled with the new platform,” he adds.

“We're not really seeing … movement away. I think people are actually understanding why Google is moving to this newer model. They're understanding the ability to track app and website traffic data together, they're understanding that websites are moving on to new platforms like [Facebook-created Javascript library] React, and that this way of tracking is more effective in that space. So I think people understand it,” says Nissim.

He compares the perceived pain in shifting to GA4 to learning to drive.

“When you first get in a car, you've got no idea what you're doing. But eventually it becomes second nature. The problem is we are three weeks in and people are panicking – they can’t drive the car. But I think as time goes on, they'll start to learn how to use the tool and Google will 100 per cent make improvements. This isn't the finished piece. It will improve exactly as Universal did. But at the moment, people are scared of the unknown.”

Look-back data dies

Nissim says his enterprise clients using the paid UA360 version, which runs for another year, are “not concerned” about the shift. He says mid-tier clients have had GA4 for over a year, “if not longer, so they have got used to it”, though he adds that the issue of losing legacy data is a live one.

“One of the key things we've not discussed with anyone who has moved over to GA4 [is that] you can't do seasonality, you can't look at year-on-year, you can't see what your old website looked like – that data dies. So how do we bring that across? And I think it's a really important thing that no one's really spoken around.”

That aside, Nissim repeats that his larger clients are carrying on as normal, with some tweaks to user interfaces.

“Enterprise clients are relying on us to do the work. So we're taking that data, putting it into Looker [Google’s data visualisation suite] or Tableau [Salesforce’s equivalent] or some other visualisation tool. So I think our clients are very, very relaxed about it. Because as far as they're concerned, it's working exactly as they want it to. There is not mass panic.”

Time to scope alternatives?

Scentre Group’s Jason Elk agrees that the top end of town is more likely to have the technical resource to manage the transition. But small to mid-sized firms, which make up the vast bulk of users by volume, do not.

“Even describing things like Looker, or Big Query, or any of these things to the other end of that spectrum, or even the middle of that spectrum, starts to get people fairly rattled, to put it mildly,” he says. Elk agrees that the inability to look back at previous data is going to be a “big surprise” for the average user.

He thinks businesses would be wise to scope alternatives.

“I would suggest that every business consider an alternative during this period, at the very least run something else like Matomo, or Piano, alongside GA4,” says Elk. “There's no reason that that would harm anything. It gives you an opportunity to compare apples with apples for your business and understand whether that's a benefit for you, or whether it makes sense to try to make GA4 work for your business.”

Rank Robin’s Charlie Penwarden agrees.

“Clients should stress test analytics tools and have strict criteria on what they need to do driven by GDPR or other notices. I'm sure that in Australia there will be similar privacy laws coming very soon. The most practical thing you can do is run two side by side, see what fits, and go from there.”

Piano’s Marie Fenner concurs.

“The important thing is whatever tool you use … own that data and perhaps more importantly, own the process. Because if you own the data, and own the process itself, you become independent.”