Today, Google announced the integration of Display & Video 360 (DV360) with Google Analytics 4 (GA4). This is a crucial integration that users of both platforms have been eagerly awaiting, because it enables a couple of very powerful use cases.
First, GA4 users will now be able to export audiences from GA to DV360 for targeting. For example, you’ll be able to define high-value audiences using GA4’s analysis tools, then send those audiences to DV360 for customized targeting. You’ll also be able to identify low-value audiences and ensure they’re suppressed from your DV360 campaigns, helping your campaign budgets work smarter for you.
Second, GA4 users will be able to export conversions from GA to DV360, enabling the use of custom bidding scripts based on GA conversions. A common use case for this is optimizing toward weighted conversion values, rather than valuing all conversions equally. For example, a full and validated form submission could get a weight of 1.0x, while an email newsletter signup is weighted at 0.1x, and a scheduled appointment is weighted at 2.0x.
Also of note is that this integration is available for the first time in the free GA4 product, opening up the usage of this integration to a wider range of organizations. However, users of the enterprise GA4 product will enjoy an enhanced version of this integration, with dramatically higher limits on the numbers of audiences and conversions that can be exported.
The DV360 integration comes hot on the heels of the recent Google Optimize integration, and signals another major step toward GA4 becoming a fully integrated component of the Google Marketing Platform and reaching parity with Universal Analytics.
As seen from the Admin panel of GA4: DV360 is now available under “Product Linking.”
To enable the integration, you’ll first need to ensure that you’ve activated Google Signals within your GA4 property and enabled Personalized Advertising. From there, there’s a simple process to follow which should only take a few minutes.
The linking process allows you to either link to DV360 yourself, or to send a linking request to a DV360 advertiser
Here are a few additional technical details to consider as you get started:
- Expect to see a few new traffic source parameters in GA4. With the DV360 integration, they will populate automatically with auto-tagging enabled (the default behavior):
| Parameter | Dimension |
| utm_source | Source |
| utm_medium | Medium |
| utm_campaign | Campaign |
| utm_source_platform | Source platform |
| utm_creative_format | Creative format |
| utm_marketing_tactic | Marketing tactic |
- Source platform, creative format, and marketing tactic are new pieces of campaign metadata in GA4. You can pass this data in manually, but if you can leverage the auto-tagging features that rely on gclid and dclid, you’ll get this additional data more reliably and more efficiently.
This launch is a major milestone on the path toward organizations adopting GA4 more and more for day-to-day use. There’s more to come on the DV360 integration, too, so DV360 users have even more to look forward to in the future.
To learn more about the transition to Google Analytics 4, read our Beginner’s Guide to GA4.
