The eve of September 2024

🔥 What's New ?

👉 GA4 reintroduces a popular tool for analysts

As with GA3, it is now possible to plot up to five lines of data directly in GA4's detailed reports.

Other enhancements to the tool include :

• Visit anomaly detection Automatic identification of unusual metric fluctuations in reports.

• Report-integrated descriptions: quick access to information on each report via tooltips.

• Mark key events: Option to highlight important events in the dedicated report by clicking on the 3 dots next to each event.

• A new transaction report: Detailed analysis of individual transactions.

• Enhanced acquisition reports :some text
  • User metrics in the user acquisition report.
  • Session metrics in the traffic acquisition report.

👉 BigQuery: A new page of insights and recommendations

BigQuery partners with Active Assist to offer machine learning-based optimization recommendations.

These recommendations, accessible via BigQuery Studio and the INFORMATION_SCHEMAor the hub of recommendations.

This new feature addresses 3 elements of BigQuery data management:

• Partitioning and clustering:- Analyze queries to identify table optimization opportunities- Suggest table partitioning and clustering strategies on BigQuery to optimize your costs.

• Materialized views:- Examine existing workflows and identify opportunities for using materialized views- Suggest optimizations to improve performance

• IAM permissions management:- Evaluates current permissions on datasets- Detects accounts with excessive permissions and recommends IAM role adjustments to enhance security

👉 BigQuery: Vector Search now available to all customers

Vector Search is now available to all BigQuery users. We had the opportunity to test this feature during its preview phase a few months ago, and the results were very promising.

To find out more, see our full guide in the "Sharing is Caring" section below 👇.

👉 Confidential matching in Google Ads: a new technology from Google to protect data privacy

Google has just launched the "Confidential Matching" approach, which aims to enable advertisers to use first-party data in a secure, privacy-friendly way in Google Ads.Confidential matching" is a data processing feature integrated into Google Ads. Thanks to confidential technology technology, matches audience lists created by advertisers with Google audience data, using a secure execution environment (TEE). Its main objective is to optimize audience lists by removing unused identifiers. Activated by default and at no extra cost, confidential matching requires no action on the part of advertisers. Customer data is isolated during processing, inaccessible even to Google.

In particular, it applies to data used with Customer Match via a direct connection to Google Ads Data Manager or Audience Manager. The matching process takes as input a customer list data file, created from contact information provided by customers, and produces as output a list of matching Google users, in the form of an audience list in the advertiser's Google Ads account.

This is the first time the technology has been used in an advertising product, and Google plans to extend its application to more of its advertising solutions.

Google wants to assure advertisers of the transparency that this solution will bring, by putting in place technical guarantees of the product codes supplied and the possibility of receiving an attestation that their data is being processed as intended.

Google appears to be rethinking its approach to third-party cookies. After recently abandoning plans to do away with them altogether, the company now seems to be focusing on strengthening personal data protection and privacy in its advertising and commercial offerings.

💡 Tip of the month

Our "Tip of the month" section shares practical tips used daily at Starfox Analytics. These tips cover various Web Analytics tools to optimize your work. Don't hesitate to try them out and share them with your colleagues.

Transferring ownership of dashboards to Looker Studio

Ownership of Looker Studio dashboards can only be transferred between e-mail addresses in the same domain. For example, from one @yourcompany.com address to another @yourcompany.com address.

This limitation can pose problems of dashboard management and control for companies working with external agencies.

✅ We advise you to create your own dashboards and share access with your external service providers to ensure good governance of your assets.

🤩 Inside Starfox

🎉 Starfix is officially launched

Starfixa tracking and marketing tag detection tool for our customers, is the fruit of a remarkable collective effort. The project, launched by David Smilovitzwas brilliantly developed by Daniel VALIDE and Oussama CHAFI. Thanks to their effective collaboration and productive approach, the team brought this initiative to a successful conclusion.

🎉 We are now present on Medium

This initiative is part of our strategy to communicate the latest data trends to a wider international audience. All our consultants will actively participate by publishing articles on tracking, web analytics, data engineering and machine learning. Discover our first article on our Medium page.

📖 Sharing Is Caring

Every month, our "Sharing is Caring" column presents an in-depth article on a current topic in Web Analytics. Our experts use their know-how and online resources to explore these topics in detail.

This month, discover our article on the integration of Vector Search in BigQuery. Written by Fadoua of Starfox Analytics, this article offers a detailed guide to using vector search in BigQuery. Vector Search in BigQuery

❤️ Best articles of the moment

Google Analytics 4: Intraday Big Query data limitations - Datama If you collect data in GA4, you certainly use exports to BigQuery. So you may have already noticed that at a given moment, the data was not exactly the same between the 2 tools. This article shows how data evolves over time (intraday and interday tables).