GA4 Is the Future: Google Announces Plan to Sunset UA in 2023

Today’s Google Analytics 4 (GA4) announcement from Google is an exciting step into the future of analytics. It’s a substantial change to its web and app analytics strategy and the next step in the evolution of Google Analytics (GA). Effective July 1, 2023, the product called Google Analytics Universal Analytics (UA) will no longer be processing any new data. UA 360 properties will receive an additional three months of new hit processing ending on October 1, 2023.

As the #1 GA Platform partner and provider, Adswerve has been in close communication with Google for the past two years while it developed this new analytics platform. Adswerve has been able to provide detailed product feature feedback and communicate the needs of our clients. While the product continues to evolve and mature, we believe that this shift from a pageview-oriented model to an event-based model best aligns with the future of how companies will measure user engagement. We value our relationship with Google and look forward to continuing to share our clients’ needs with the team creating the most used web and app analytics platform in the world.

Understandably, today’s news may take many people by surprise and cause a moment of concern. The investment in the current deployment and maintenance of existing UA environments is expansive. Especially when you consider all the other systems that connect to the resulting data, either directly or via BigQuery.

Given Adswerve’s close relationship with Google while it created GA4, our consulting and technical teams developed a streamlined process that helps onboard our clients to the new analytics platform with minimal disruption. In fact, by the end of this month, we will have set up GA4 migrations for nearly 100 clients. 

This adoption process can run in parallel with your existing UA configuration, enabling the best of both worlds. As a result, your business will immediately start collecting data in GA4 so that come July 1, 2023, you have historical data to report against, and as of January 1, 2024, you are able to do year-over-year analysis.

While there is nothing immediate for you to do following this recent announcement, we recommend you check out our recent What's New in GA4 webinar. It will provide a roadmap of what steps you can take to prepare. 

We understand that our clients may have additional questions. We’re here to help. If you’d like to have a conversation about what this announcement may mean to you, we recommend that you reach out to your account team as soon as possible so that we can have a meeting and talk through your future plans together. Or, get in touch here.

Looking to get started with GA4? Check out our recent hands-on workshop and get started tagging today! Now available on-demand!