Google Analytics 4, also known as GA4 is Google's latest iteration of analytics tracking for your site. Recently Google announced that effective July 2023, GA4 will fully replace the current version of analytics known as Universal Analytics or UA.
IMPORTANT:
Make sure you do not delete the UA view or remove the UA tag from your site. This is what maintains the connection to your Mediavine Dashboard for now, and is what allows us to calculate things like RPM, earnings by country, device, impressions per pageview, and so much more.
We aren't officially switching to GA4 quite yet and will continue to use Universal Analytics in the meantime, so you'll need to run both GA4 and UA concurrently in order to maintain the vital analytics connection to your Mediavine dashboard. That said, we're still recommending our publishers connect their GA4 property ahead of time to be fully prepared for the switch.
Fortunately it's super easy to set up GA4 without disconnecting UA!
Log into your current Google Analytics account for the site to which you want to add GA4, then click admin in the lower left corner:
On the next screen, select "GA4 Setup Assistant" from the center column:
Select "I want to create a New Google Analytics 4 Property" from the available options:
On the next screen the wizard will create your new Google Analytics 4 property. Click Create and Continue.
That's it! Your GA4 property has been created. This screen allows you to click through to see the new GA4 property:
Which looks like this:
You can view both using the blue buttons in those screens during setup, but in the future, you can toggle between the two different views here:
How to check your GA4 time zone
Since your Mediavine dashboard reports in (GMT-04:00)New York time, it’s also important to ensure that your GA4 property is set to this same time zone. Otherwise there can be discrepancies in RPM reporting on your Mediavine dashboard, which reports in Eastern Standard Time.
1. Go to analytics.google.com and log into your account.
2. Make sure the view is set to your GA4 property in the dropdown in the top left corner of your analytics account.
3. Click the Admin link on the bottom left corner of the page.
4. Next click the “Property Settings” button in the farthest right column.
5. Make sure the Reporting time zone is set to (GMT-04:00) New York Time.
If the property is already set to New York Time, you’re all set and you can stop here. If it isn’t though, then we recommend creating a new property set to the New York time zone to ensure there aren’t any issues with reporting in your dashboard.
How to setup a secondary GA4 property in the New York time zone
1. Locate the "Property" column and click "Create Property".
2. Name your property something that will tell you what time zone it is reporting in, and choose the New York time zone.
3. Click “Next”, where you’ll be asked a few questions about your business, and then finally click "Create".
4. Select Web, then enter your website's url, site name, and click "Create stream":
5. Click "View tag instructions" to see how you can add this GA4 property to your site:
6. Google will look for recommended ways to add this new GA4 property to your site and you can follow its instructions or you can click "Install manually" and copy the script tag and add it to the head of your site(in the same area where any current Google Analytics have been inserted):
You'll now have two different GA4 properties in your analytics account. The new property will not have past data, it will only collect data after you've applied the new GA4 script on your site.
As always if you have questions, please reach out to publishers@mediavine.com.