Understand GA4 Audiences For Targeting and Remarketing

The most talked-about features of Google Analytics 4 are GA4 Audiences, Reports, Data Exploration, and a few more. We have planned to explain these features one by one for the users to understand GA4 (as we covered Data Exploration in the previous blog). At the moment, we will be covering GA4 Audiences. Google Analytics 4 offers many features such as segments, audiences, comparisons, etc. It can be difficult to distinguish between these features in GA4 because they are so similar, but at the same time, they have significant differences as well.

Check this out to know all about how GA4 is different from Universal Analytics.

In this blog, we will dive deeper into the concept of GA4 Audiences; what they are; how to create them; where to use them, etc.

What are Audiences?

Audiences are the subset of the users that can be used in Analysis and also for GA4 remarketing efforts. These can be created using a combination of dimensions, metrics, and/or events important to your business. 

For example, a group of users whose location is ‘Mumbai’ city and have visited 2 pages on the website or a group of users who have made a purchase on the website.

The audiences are constantly re-evaluated to ensure they meet the criteria, as more data gets collected in GA.

Audiences in Google Analytics 4

While accessing your GA4 Audiences, it can be used for many different purposes in your account, such as showing ads to specific target users, remarketing users, etc. To make sure of the availability of your GA4 audiences in Google Ads, GA4 Property is linked to Google Ads.

Note: You have to enable Google Signals in your property settings. 

You can then use the GA4 audiences as targeting options for advertising campaigns. GA4 remarketing is a powerful purpose for users who want to target GA4 audiences for advertisement objectives.

Another powerful use of GA4 Audiences is Comparison. You will be able to see an option to add “Comparison” in every standard report. This feature will allow you to compare different subsets of users. 

For example, you have created an audience of the users who have made a purchase on the website and an audience of the users who have not made any purchase. You can directly use this audience and compare the user behavior through the default reports in GA4.

Learn more about creating the audience in GA4 here.

GA4 Audience Templates

GA4 audience has a few predefined templates that are partially configured, based on which you can create desired audiences. There are 3 types of templates available in GA4:

GA4 Predictive Audiences

Predictive audiences in GA4 will help you categorize users who are likely to perform a specific action in their journey. Google Analytics 4 builds predictive audiences based on past behaviors of your customers such as buying or churning. You won’t be able to edit the GA4 predictive audiences, but you can add any non-predictive condition like filtering it by a particular city as per your business requirements.

Import GA4 Audiences to Google Ads

As we saw in one of our previous sections of this blog, you can link your Google Ads account to your GA4 property. Further, you can use audiences as targeting options for your Google ads. However, make sure to have the following settings done:

• Activate Google Signals

To enable Google Signals, go to the Admin Panel, under Property Settings click Data Settings > Data Collection, then click on “Get Started”. Then follow the instructions to enable Google Signals.

• Link your Google Ads/GA accounts

Select Enable Personalization Advertising. (Audiences will be available for remarketing on the Google Search/Google Display Network and YouTube).

Note: Your past data will not be included in the audience. It starts aggregating data only after you create it.

Differences between G4 Audiences and Segments

There are a few major differences between segments and audiences. Let’s dive deeper into the difference:

1. Segments can be used only in explorations whereas audiences can be used in Comparisons as one of the filtering conditions in standard reports.
2. Segments are retroactive, audiences are not. Segments will show you past data based on the conditions you enter whereas audiences will start aggregating user data from the moment when you create them.
3. Audiences can be imported into Google Ads and you can show ads to them. Segments cannot be directly imported. But you can build an audience based on the segments.
4. Segment settings can be edited any time you want. That is not possible with audiences (except by changing the name or description)
5. You can create up to 100 audiences in total (per GA4 property). The limit of segments applies to a single exploration. You can create up to 10 segments per exploration.

Conclusion

Audiences in GA4 are one of the powerful upgrades to Universal Analytics that Google has brought. Predictive audience and Churn Audience that can be utilized to target the users for increased stickiness and enhanced remarketing. Stay tuned to learn about Sub properties in GA4 and learn more about such GA4 features in our upcoming blogs! Explore and know in-depth about such exciting features but make sure to plan your GA4 migration as soon as possible.! So till the time, Google Analytics 4 will supplant Universal Analytics (UA), you are up and ready for it!