Name: RAIBEC
Rating: 4.8

“Digital marketing measurement is fundamentally changing in 2025.”

This is the main message Raibec’s team brought back from this year’s Think Digital conference in Warsaw, organized by Google. The event was packed with insights, presentations, and strategic visions for where Google Analytics and the broader digital marketing ecosystem are heading.

GA4: From a Tool to a Comprehensive Measurement Platform

Google officially announced a new version of Google Analytics 4 (GA4) — a version that not only introduces several new features but also marks a fundamental strategic shift. The new platform is being developed as a long-term, data-driven infrastructure for digital marketing that will be used not only by marketers but also by data analysts, growth strategists, product managers, and other business decision-makers.

GA4 aims to create a unified environment for tracking, analyzing, and optimizing the entire user journey — from first touchpoint to purchase and loyalty phases — across all platforms, both online and offline.

User Journey Analysis: From Fragments to Unity

GA4 puts strong focus on cross-channel and cross-device tracking, allowing for monitoring user behavior across all interaction points — ads, organic traffic, email, social media, mobile apps, or even physical stores.

This allows marketers to:

Move away from outdated and misleading “last click” models.
See the full picture of user behavior.
Attribute conversions more accurately to real channels.
Create smarter automated campaigns for different audiences.
Analyze audiences and their actions in even more detail.

AI Integration: More Than Just Insights

Google continues to lean heavily into AI-driven analytics. From now on, GA4 won’t just collect data — it will analyze and interpret it for you:

1. Automatic AI Insights

The system will automatically detect significant data changes and provide interpretations with commentary explaining potential causes behind those shifts.

2. Google Analytics Chat

This is a major leap forward. Through a simple text query, you’ll be able to ask:

“What were the main sources of conversions for channel X in February?”
“Show a graph of how mobile traffic changed over the last 6 months.”

And receive an instant response with a visualization.
This is a powerful tool not only for analysts, but also for those who work with data only occasionally or lack deep technical knowledge.

New Platform Integrations: The Full Data Picture

GA4 will become the central hub for marketing data because it will:

Automatically import ad spend data from Snapchat, Pinterest, Reddit, Facebook, and other platforms. This means costs, clicks, and results from different channels will be viewable in one interface.
Support CRM integrations, allowing for connection of online behavior with offline sales, call centers, or even loyalty cards.
Share audiences across properties and campaigns, enabling the same strategic logic to be applied across different brands or regions.

Better Reporting Structure and Historical Data Interpretation

One of the most anticipated changes — the return of the annotations feature, which was beloved by Universal Analytics users. This change is crucial because it will now be easier to:

Mark significant marketing actions on the timeline (e.g., campaign launch, website redesign, pricing changes).
Explain data fluctuations to colleagues or leadership.
Build a cohesive data narrative.

Security and Cleaner Data

GA4 strengthens not only capabilities but also data quality and security:

Smarter spam and bot filters to avoid misleading stats and junk traffic.
New privacy tools that comply with GDPR and other regulations, ensuring user data is maximally depersonalized and secure.

Cross-Platform Optimization: Budget Allocation Analysis

One of the most advanced features is the ad budget allocation analysis and recommendations. GA4 will assess:

Which platform provides the best ROI.
Where investments are not paying off.
How to distribute budget more efficiently across Google, Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, and others.

This helps not only with campaign optimization but also in justifying decisions to leadership.