How To Setup GA4 For Auto Dealers

How To Setup GA4 For Automotive Dealers

Why Do You Need To Setup Your Google Analytics 4 (GA4)?

If you are just getting around to using your GA4, as your Universal Analytics held on a little longer than expected, or you finally have gotten through the holiday sales and can catch a breather, you’ve probably gone in and seen your metrics are vastly different than what you had in Universal Analytics (UA). You might see nearly 2x pageviews, lower number of sessions and the kicker, 0 conversions!

If you’ve been anywhere near the automotive industry in the last few years, you’ve probably heard of the Automotive Standards Council and their goal to standardize GA4 for Automotive Dealers. If that’s the case, then why hasn’t your GA4 been setup?

The Simple Answer:

Simply put, every one of your UA accounts has gotten created into a GA4, and new GA4 accounts were created. As such, you probably have a GA4 account that is setup, but it might not be the one you are looking at.

What if I want the GA4 account I’m looking at to be setup?

If you want the GA4 you are looking at to setup and receive ASC events, you will want to reach out to your various providers (Website, Text, Call, Chat, etc…) and ask them to send GA4 events into your measurement stream (the “G-#######” you can in your GA4 data stream).

After that, you will need to provision some settings in your data stream, configure your custom dimensions, opt-in your conversion events, as well as link your Google Ads account. You can read about it on the various guides online, hire one of the million GA4 “Experts” that have come out of the woodwork, or you can use our automated setup via a Google Sheet for free.

Link To Google Sheet

What will this automation do?

The automation above will audit your Settings, Conversions, Custom Dimensions, Google Ads Link, as well as your general events and tell you what you are missing. From there, you can simply opt in to “Manage” and it will setup your account as follows:

Settings

  • Property Name
    • Adjust the property name to what you set it as
  • Category
    • Adjusts your category to “Automotive”
  • Time Zone
    • Adjusts your Time Zone to whatever you set it to
  • Currency
    • Sets your Currency as USD (or alternatively, you can set it to CAD).
  • Google Signals Terms Accepted
    • While this doesn’t adjust this setting, it is necessary in able to opt-in to Google Signals.
  • Google Signals Enabled
    • Google Signals is Google’s technology that helps unify the user across their devices. By opting in, Google will attempt to consolidate your “Users” count to just unique users, but it will cause “Thresholding” if you do not adjust your Reporting Identity.
  • Thresholding
    • While not adjusted by this automation, it will tell you if your reports are getting hit by thresholding, indicating you receive too much traffic and either need to opt-out of using Google Signals as a reporting identity.
  • Data Retention Duration
    • Adjusts your Data Retention setting to 14 months, the maximum duration for standard GA4 Accounts
  • Data Retention – Reset on New Activity
    • Insures users data retention duration resets whenever a user visits your website.
  • Number of Web Data Streams
    • Does not adjust anything via automation, but will tell you how many web data streams you have in your property. You ideally only want 1 web data stream.
  • Enhanced Measurement
    • Adjusts your enhanced measurement settings to turn off “Pageview on History Change” and “Form Interacts”. “Pageview on History Change” will fire a new pageview when filters are applied to SRPs, which we do not consider to be true, new pageviews. We turn off “Form Interacts”, as you should be getting form information from your web provider and we do not want to double count forms. 

Conversions

We enable all the standard Automotive Standard Council (ASC) events, while also giving you the ability to adjust your existing conversions (Except for the default ‘purchase’ event which we are unable to turn off). You are able to turn on any other ASC Events as conversions by clicking the check box on the column to the right. The events we turn on are: 

  • asc_comm_submission
  • asc_click_to_call
  • asc_form_submission
  • asc_purchase
  • asc_video_call_submission
  • asc_voice_submisson

Custom Dimension

We give an overview of what custom dimensions you already have created, as well as creates the recommended custom dimensions to get the most out of your ASC Events. You are maxed at 50 Event-Based custom dimensions, so make sure you do not have more than 20 custom dimensions created already. These custom dimensions are:

  • Affiliation
  • Comm Outcome
  • Comm Type
  • Currency
  • Department
  • Element Text
  • Element Type
  • Element Value
  • Event Owner
  • Flow Name
  • Flow Outcome
  • Form Name
  • Form Type
  • Item Category
  • Item Color
  • Item Condition
  • Item Fuel Type
  • Item Id
  • Item Make
  • Item Model
  • Item Number
  • Item Payment
  • Item Price
  • Item Type
  • Item Variant
  • Item Year
  • Media Type
  • Page Type
  • Product Name
  • Promotion Name

Google Ads Linking

Link your GA4 and Google Ads accounts if you have provided a CID. This is necessary to get additional information like campaign, ad group, cost, etc… from Google Ads.

ASC Event Audit

The automation does not do any changes to your ASC Events, but will provide an overview of ASC Events and what provider would send them. It also provides a list on the right as to what providers are sending events already. This will go as far back as the “Event Owner” custom dimension exists, so if you have just set it up, it might just need time to collect data.

 

Want a more visual version of running this? Here’s a quick video!

 

What if I do not see one of my providers on my Event List?

If you do not see a provider on the list, reach out to the provider with your Measurement Id (The “G-######”) and request they start sending ASC Events to your GA4. If you have any problems setting up your GA4, feel free to reach out and we might be able to point you in the right direction!

What is Thresholding in GA4?

What Is Thresholding in GA4?

Thresholding in GA4 is Google’s attempt at making the data more privacy-friendly when the underlying data could de-anonymize the end user. This occurs by removing segments of the data from being viewed, typically in breakouts like source/medium or page path. In these cases, your broken out information could be just a fraction of the original and hide important information.

When is Thresholding Applied to my GA4?

Thresholding will begin being applied in GA4 if you opt into Google Signals without adjusting the Reporting Identity, and you are viewing a data that is based on a user-scope. What this means is that if you attempt to view a segmented list of something like your source / medium report while looking at number of users, you will not see the entire data set. For that reason, it is highly recommended you avoid thresholding when possible.

How to Avoid Thresholding:

Avoiding thresholding is easily done by opting out of using your Google Signals as a reporting identity. This can be found under your Google Signals Settings

How to Adjust your Reporting Identity in GA4:

  1. Navigate to the Admin section in your GA4 Account
    GA4 Thresholding
  2. Scroll down under “Property” until you find “Data Settings” and click into “Data Collection”
    Google Signals Settings
  3. Click the toggle for “Include Google Signals in Reporting Identity” and turn it off
    Toggle Off Google Signals from Reporting Identity

 

After you’ve completed the above, you now will have a majority of your data available. You can still run into thresholding issues around Google Search and Demographic Data, but your data will now stop being subject to thresholding when you access your main reports.

Foundation Direct Announces Strategic Partnership With NCM Associates for 20 Group Clients

Foundation Direct today announced a strategic partnership with NCM Associates to provide NCM 20 Group clients with a real-time Digital Performance Composite compiling

a dealerships’ website & digital marketing efforts in one, easy–to–understand report card.

Clients will access these new digital insights through both an always-available, real-time digital composite and easy-to-digest weekly snapshots. Consistent Digital Peerset comparisons and trends will enable NCM Members to have more productive 20 Group discussions with peers about the effectiveness of their website & digital advertising – two areas that have quickly become the new battleground to win automotive shoppers. Compiling these analytics and

insights into one composite allows car dealerships to better manage marketing goals and tasks across the entire organization, and to improve ROI.

“Our industry’s robust digital data is woefully underutilized by dealers, often held hostage by inaccessible systems, non-transparent vendors, and lacking standardization across both OEMs and vendors. The NCM Digital Performance Composite, partnered with Foundation Direct’s unmatched digital expertise, is one more way NCM is helping our dealers future proof their investments and performance,” said NCM President & CEO Paul Faletti Jr. “As our industry continues to face unprecedented challenges, arming our dealers with real-time data to drive more informed decision making online and in-store is absolutely essential,” he said.

“We are thrilled to partner with an organization as well respected as NCM, and look forward to helping NCM Members unlock the power and potential of their own digital data,” said Andrew Diffenderfer, Co-Founder of Foundation Direct. “This first-of-its-kind offering will give dealers clear, transparent insights to fuel more data-driven decisions that undoubtedly lead to increased ROI, decreased waste, and a competitive advantage in their marketplace.”

The NCM Digital Performance Composite unlocks contextual insights on aggregated and peerset website performance metrics, transparency into Google Ads spend and performance, and deep dives into traffic coming from 3rd Parties. It also reveals performance across a diverse set of common dealer website tools including Chat, Text, and Digital Retailing, along with visualizations comparing digital trends against available inventory and much more. This offering will also equip dealers to effectively handle Google’s mandatory migration from Google’s Universal Analytics to the new privacy-forward GA4. The team at Foundation Direct is ensuring that enrolled NCM members are future-proofed and ready to embrace this massive shift in digital measurement.

About Foundation Direct

Foundation Direct is the leading digital advertising & intelligence solution for automotive advertisers, helping customers reduce waste and improve results while future proofing for the digital revolution through data ownership, intelligence, and competitive insights. Led by a powerhouse team of former Google Executives with unprecedented expertise spanning 50+ collective years in Google’s Automotive practice, Foundation simplifies the aggregation, analysis, contextualization, and integration of online and offline data sets into simple, intuitive insights & recommended actions. Foundation partners with some of the most successful automotive manufacturers and retailers, in addition to this exciting strategic partnership with NCM.

About NCM Associates

NCM Associates’ business is knowledge. From peer-to-peer collaboration 20 Groups, management training, and consulting, to business intelligence, and Benchmark® reporting, NCM delivers the intelligence businesses need to take their operations to the next level. With expertise spanning both retail automotive and OEM support, NCM’s grounded and proven best practices and seamless reporting provide businesses with a strong partner to be successful in the industry.