How to create and use audiences in Google Analytics 4 (GA4)

Editor's note: This article was originally published in January 2023 and has been updated to reflect current Google Analytics 4 navigation and product changes, including the sunset of Universal Analytics (July 2024) and Google Optimize (September 2023).

When you have your foundational Google Analytics 4 (GA4) measurement functioning, you can start building out features that let you act on your data. Audiences is one of the most actionable capabilities in Google Analytics 4. It groups users based on shared behaviors, demographics, or interactions, so you can analyze those segments in your reports and activate them across connected platforms like Google Ads, Display & Video 360 (DV360), and Search Ads 360 (SA360). Whether you're building remarketing lists, suppressing recent converters, or identifying high-value users for prospecting, audiences are foundational to any data-driven media strategy.

Even if they aren't part of your immediate strategy, building your foundational Google Analytics 4 audiences today is one of the best low-LOE investments you can make in your team's toolkit. Because Google Analytics 4 does not retroactively populate audience data for its internal reports, setting up segments — like recent purchasers or logged-in users — means you start capturing that behavioral data immediately. When you're finally ready to launch that major purpose-driven campaign across Google Ads, SA360, or DV360, you'll already have rich, historical insights and fully primed audiences ready to activate on day one.

Key takeaways

• Google Analytics 4 offers two audience types: Predictive Audiences (machine learning-based) and Custom Audiences (criteria you define).
• Audiences only collect data from the moment you create them, which means the sooner you build them, the more historical data you'll have when you're ready to activate.
• Custom audiences support conditions, sequencing, exclusions, and membership durations of up to 540 days.
• Once created, audiences can be used in standard reports, Explorations, and activated across linked platforms including Google Ads, DV360, and SA360.

What are the types of GA4 audiences?

There are two types of audiences that you can use in Google Analytics: Predictive Audiences (built by GA4 based on your data) and Custom Audiences (configurable, much like segments in Universal Analytics/Google Analytics 360). 

4. You can define Membership Duration for the audience next. This will depend on your business’ sales or marketing cycles. How long do you want to keep this audience in a group for analysis or activation? You can choose 7 days, 14 days, 30 days, or all the way up to the max of 540 days (18 months) from the time the user was added to the audience list.

5. Audience Triggers add yet another layer for refining your audience and allow a new event to be sent when the audience criteria are met (similar to being able to create a custom conversion event based on an event and specific parameters). Checking the box below depends on how you’d like to use the audience you’ve created, and it may not be applicable to you. 

6. The Summary shows how many users make up the audience you’ve created and what percentage they are of your total traffic. This is similar to estimates given by Segments in Universal Analytics. Once you’ve configured the audience, you should save it. 

Below is an example of a built-out audience. In this example, the audience (and audience trigger) can be set to fire based on simple thresholds. You can see users who interacted with a Page Path containing “blog” and eventually went to a subsequent page with a Page Path containing “contact” within a 10-minute timeframe. Users will stay in this audience for 30 days and have an audience-triggered event called audience_blogTHENcontact.   

How to use audiences in Google Analytics (GA4)

Audiences allow you to break down your data into smaller, more meaningful groups for analysis. You can add them to Reports and Explorations, and give them reports of their own (once you create the audience, navigate to Admin > Property settings > Data display > Audiences and click into it).