How do you use GA4 as a PPC specialist?

[No-Egg7514]

GA4 is absolutely essential for PPC specialists! You’re not just analyzing campaign performance in-platform – you need to understand the full user journey post-click. Key things I monitor: landing page performance by campaign/ad group, conversion paths (especially assisted conversions), bounce rates and engagement time by traffic source, and attribution models to see how PPC contributes beyond last-click. In terms of changes/setup, I always create custom audiences in GA4 for retargeting, set up proper conversion tracking with enhanced measurement, and build custom reports for PPC-specific metrics. At Blue Bagels, we’ve found that most PPC specialists who ignore GA4 are flying blind – you’re missing crucial insights about what happens AFTER the click. The platforms tell you cost and clicks, but GA4 tells you the quality of that traffic.

[fathom53]

Most don’t have GA4 set up properly to use it begin with is the biggest issue. Making sure you invest the time to set it up properly is key. For our lead gen and ecom clients, we will make sure we track conversions and revenue in GA4 for:

* Add To Cart
* Checkout
* Purchase (make Primary in Google Ads)
* Phone Calls (make Primary in Google Ads)
* Lead Form (make Primary in Google Ads)

This lets us see how paid ads does against SEO, email, affiliate and other marketing channels for the business.

You can also look at building custom reports for your funnel and where do people drop off. Or you can build custom dashboards for your boss and executive team.

[Sensitive_Summer_804]

You don’t “need” GA4 as a PPC specilaist, but it’s a nice-to-have tool in your toolbox. It’s particularly useful to compare Google Ads performance to other channels.

Bear in mind though that most clients don’t have it properly installed with the right events. It’s one of the most annotying and confusing pieces of software Google has ever come up with.

[MarginDrivenPPC]

GA4 is fundamental in my daily life, PPC that I don’t use, is completely blind to strategy and results. And that, unfortunately, GA4 is not the 100% ideal tool yet, it uses a lot of sampling data and has a delay in processing and modeling the data, I prefer to use big query to process the raw data according to business needs. But objectively, I use GA4 to visualize all post-click KPIs (session, bounce rate, engagement rate, average time per session, conversion tx). In addition to mapping the conversion path on the website, abandonment rate through personalized events, cohort and different attribution models (first click, data driven and last click).

[trsgreen]

GA4 for most companies, is the source of truth for digital. I rely on GA4 numbers for my true Rev & ROAS metrics.

[jampman31]

I check engagement metrics, not just clicks. If engagement is low, landing page and ads aren’t aligned

[Responsible_Routine6]

Crying and yelling

[Available_Cup5454]

Use GA4 to track assisted conversions check traffic quality by session engagement and align UTM data with ad platform metrics for attribution accuracy.

[ppcwithyrv]

Are you buying for clients?

[GoogleAdExpert]

GA4 is key for PPC specialists to track conversions and user behavior. Focus on setting up accurate events and conversions tied to your ads, then analyze user paths, engagement, and ROI. It helps improve targeting and measure true campaign impact beyond clicks.

[MjG_8]

Conversion tracking

[Single-Sea-7804]

Campaign level performance across landing pages, Channel level performance to compare against other paid media platforms, creating a benchmark of performance against organic and/or other platforms to see how well your PPC is doing, etc. etc. Possibilities are endless!

[FreshNewIdea]

I’m confused at your question. Don’t you use event tracking for coversions?