[GA4] Attributing conversion to online publications

In this article:

• Understanding the KPIs
• How to report the conversion of online publications
• Using Audiences
      -  Creating an audience
      -  Publications are tracked in a separate GA4 data stream
      -  Publications and website are tracked in the GA4 data stream (cross domain tracking)

Understanding the KPIs

Catalogs are very powerful in reaching your top-of-funnel audience, creating brand awareness as well as inspiring conversion. The success of online catalogs can therefor be tracked across the entire funnel, looking at Reach, Impressions, Traffic and Conversion as they are all Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). There are different ways to better understand how online publications have contributed to the final milestone, conversion. First of all, it depends on how GA4 tracking is set up for your publications. And second, you can look at direct sales or long-term sales, in which case users were inspired by the catalog but completed the purchase at a later date. 

This article will help you better understand how catalog views can influence shopping behavior and inspire conversion. 

How to report the conversion of online publications

The options available to attribute conversion to online publications, depend on how GA4 is configured to track your publications as well as where the publications are found.

For example, if you have embedded the publications onto your website, or you have cross domain tracking set up (i.e. publications and website are tracked in the same data stream), you can use Audiences to look at the sales numbers of catalog viewers specifically. 

If you don't have cross domain tracking and your publications aren't embedded but they are loaded in a separated window, you can use the Traffic Acquisition report in GA4 and look for the sources that are associated with your online publications. For example, you might find the default view.publitas.com and/or your custom domain for publications listed in there. If you have UTM parameters appended to the links in your publications, these can also appear in the report.

Use the dropdown menu above the
Traffic Acquisition report to select
the most suitable view:

Using Audiences

In GA4, building Audiences has become a new standard to run any kind of report, whether it's to better understand user interactions and shopping behavior, to monitor trends or feed predictions. By creating and using an Audience of users that have interacted with your catalog, you can look at your sales reports and see how this audience converts. Different conditions can be applied to create a more focused group.

Once you have an Audience set up, a simple way to use it is to include as it as a comparison in your conversion or acquisition reports:

Creating an audience

1. In Google Analytics 4, go to Admin
2. Go to Audiences after selecting the property
3. Click on New Audience and select Create a custom audience
4. Enter a name for the new audience, for example: Catalog viewers
5. Click on Add new condition, select either Page location or a specific event to use as the condition for the new Audience. See the chapters below for more information:
            -  Publications are tracked in a separate GA4 data stream
            -  Publications and website are tracked in the GA4 data stream (cross domain tracking)
6. Set the Membership duration: Consider for how long users can remain a member of the audience by asking yourself: Within how many days after interacting with a catalog can a purchase still be associated with the catalog? When in doubt, we recommend setting a membership duration of 30 days.
7. Click Save

Creating the 'Catalog viewers' audience via Google Analytics 4 Admin:

If you don't have access to the Audiences in the Admin section, follow these steps:

1. In Google Analytics 4, go to Explore
2. In a new or random Exploration, add a new Segment
3. Select User Segment
4. Enter a name for the new audience, for example: Catalog viewers
5. Click on Add new condition, select either Page location or a specific event to use as the condition for the new Audience. See the chapters below for more information:
            -  Publications are tracked in a separate GA4 data stream
            -  Publications and website are tracked in the GA4 data stream (cross domain tracking)
6. Tick the box Build an audience and set the Membership duration: Consider for how long users can remain a member of the audience by asking yourself: Within how many days after interacting with a catalog can a purchase still be associated with the catalog? When in doubt, we recommend setting a membership duration of 30 days.
7. Click on Save & Apply

Creating the 'Catalog viewers' audience via Google Analytics 4 Exploration:

Publications are tracked in a separate GA4 data stream

Because conversion events are tracked in the data stream of the website, we need to set up the Audience in the property of the website. The criteria for users to become a member of the Audience will be based on whether they have seen a page that embeds one of your online publications.
So, for the Audience to be as accurate as possible, it is recommended that all these pages have a unique name or URL structure that you can look for, which isn't used by any other pages of the website.

In step 5 of Creating an audience, select Page location from Page / screen dimensions, use the contains operator and enter the word or combination of words that will only apply to the pages that embed your online publications. 
If you need to exclude certain pages from the Audience's conditions, click on AND, select Page location again and use the does not contain operator to avoid wrong pages to be included.

Example:

• All webpages with publications embedded on them have the word 'catalog' in their URL, one of them being domain.com/spring-catalog-2023. The Audience will use the condition: Page location contains catalog
• The website also has a page containing an overview of available publications, which also has the word 'catalog' in its URL: domain.com/catalog-archive. AS this page does not contain an embedded publication, the Audience has an additional condition that will exclude this specific page: Page location does not contain catalog-archive
  
  Example Audience based on page locations that contain 'catalog' but do not contain 'catalog-archive':
  

Publications and website are tracked in the GA4 data stream (cross domain tracking)

In this case, the property that contains the conversion events also contains all publication events. This makes it easy to pick and build different kinds of audiences. Here, you can choose what kind of audience you would like to see the traffic and conversion numbers for:

• Users who have seen a catalog: In step 5 of Creating an audience, look up and select the pbl_pageview event in the list of Events
• Users who have browsed a catalog: In step 5 of Creating an audience, look up and select the pbl_user_navigation event in the list of Events
• Users who have clicked on a link inside a catalog: In step 5 of Creating an audience, look up and select the pbl_link_click event in the list of Events