Create and Use Google Analytics 4 audiences directly in Google Ads

Good news for marketers and business owners; you can now create and use Google Analytics 4 (GA4) audiences directly in Google Ads. Using the Audience Manager feature and during the campaign creation process, you can now build GA4 predictive audiences for better ad targeting without leaving the Google Ads platform.  

Additionally, GA4 has added new dimensions to its audience builder, segment builder, customer reports builder, and data API which allows for more refined audience segments and more effective and personalized campaign.  

What is a GA4 Predictive Audience?

A predictive audience in GA4 is a group of website users with at least one condition based on a predictive metric. Predictive audiences are only available on GA4 accounts that meet minimum traffic and conversion thresholds. An important thing to note is that, if you have exported predictive audiences to linked product accounts, those audiences won’t add new users if it becomes ineligible for the predictive metric.  

What Are the New Dimensions Available in GA4?

Dimensions are descriptive texts that provide more insights and context about your data. Examples of reporting dimensions in GA4 include audience names, user locations, and transaction IDs. Google has added more dimensions which will help you measure activity using both pre-defined and custom dimensions.  

Following are the GA4 features in which the new reporting dimensions are being added:  

• Audience builder 
• Segment builder 
• Custom reports builder 
• Data API 

Pre-defined Dimensions and Custom Dimensions

Pre-defined dimensions are dimensions that are already available for use in GA4 such as, “age”, “country” and “browser”. They do not require any additional code for data collection.

By creating custom dimensions in GA4, you can track and report on specific details about users and/or how they have interacted with your website or application. Custom dimensions are especially useful when the pre-determined dimensions and metrics do not have the data that you want to analyze. Examples of custom dimensions can include property or location names, website content groupings (or business units), and promotion packages.

Item-scoped Dimension

Item-scoped dimensions are descriptive texts specifically about a product sold on your online store. Google is adding built-in item-scoped custom dimensions to GA4’s Audience builder, Segment builder, Custom reports builder and Data API. 

Following pre-defined item-scoped dimensions have been added to the segment builder on GA4: 

• Item ID 
• Item name 
• Item brand 
• Item variant 
• Item affiliation 
• Item category 
• Item category (1-5) 
• Item promotion name 
• Item promotion creative slot 
• Item promotion creative name 
• Item list ID 
• Item list name 
• Item list position 
• Item location ID 

Following predefined item-scoped dimensions have been added to the audience builder on GA4: 

• Item list ID 
• Item list position 
• Item location ID 
• Item promotion creative name 
• Item promotion creative slot 
• Item promotion name 

Why We Care

These new features in Google Ads and GA4 can improve the efficiency of generating customized audience targeting for your campaigns. The broadened options for dimensions in GA4 will also allow for greater customization in reporting, as well as further facilitate building highly customized audience segments.