2024 was a transformative year in analytics, defined by major changes in tools, methodologies, and compliance standards. From the retirement of Universal Analytics to innovations in first-party data strategies and attribution modeling, businesses faced both challenges and opportunities as they navigated this evolving landscape.
GA4 - Navigating bugs & insights
With Universal Analytics retired in July, GA4 became the default analytics platform for businesses, signifying a shift in how data is collected and analyzed. While the transition brought opportunities to refine tracking and reporting, it also introduced challenges that required businesses to adapt to a new analytics landscape shaped by evolving privacy standards and technological updates.
The transition wasn’t without its hurdles. Analysts encountered bugs like direct traffic dominating channel distributions and Google Ads traffic being mislabeled as "(organic)" on the campaign level, disrupting reporting and strategic planning. Additionally, tracking single-page applications (SPAs) proved challenging, with issues such as inconsistent event triggering and difficulty maintaining accurate user journeys.
What’s the takeaway? While GA4 shows immense potential, 2024 highlighted that even the most advanced platforms have flaws. Let’s hope 2025 brings smoother performance, fewer surprises, and meaningful improvements to the analytics experience.
The growing dominance of BigQuery
2024 marked a turning point for BigQuery, solidifying its place as a favorite among analysts. Its seamless integration with GA4 made it effortless to export data and combine it with sources like Salesforce and Facebook Ads, offering a more comprehensive view of customer journeys and campaign performance.
The connection to Looker Studio further streamlined the creation of dashboards, eliminating lengthy load times and simplifying the visualization process. Insights became faster and more intuitive to uncover, with BigQuery enabling the efficient handling of large datasets.
With these capabilities, BigQuery quickly became an essential part of businesses' analytics toolkits. It offered tremendous value at a relatively low cost compared to other advanced platforms, without the burden of complex setups or heavy maintenance. For digital analysts, this shift highlighted the growing importance of technical skills like SQL to unlock the platform’s full potential.
Consent-mode and modeled data - Insights without consent
In 2024, GA4's modeling capabilities and Consent Mode set the stage for data-driven analysis in a privacy-conscious world. As more users "rejected all cookies," AI became the go-to solution for filling data gaps and providing actionable insights.
The release of Consent Mode v2 introduced new parameters like "ad_user_data" and "ad_personalisation," sparking questions and confusion. What exactly do these parameters do, and what’s the difference between basic and advanced mode? Many struggled to grasp the purpose of these updates and which version would be the right fit for their needs.
These parameters were designed to address both regulatory demands and growing user expectations for privacy, while still enabling businesses to optimize campaigns and reporting. Although some continue to debate whether advanced consent mode is fully compliant with the law, 2024 proved that companies were willing to embrace the technology to stay competitive in a rapidly evolving data landscape.
Looking ahead to 2025 - Trends and priorities
As we move into 2025, businesses will need to focus on strategies that align with a privacy-first, data-driven world.
Centralized data systems: Unified data lakes and BigQuery exports for GA4 will streamline reporting and enable tools like marketing mix modeling (MMM) for better attribution.
Blurring roles: The distinction between data engineers and analysts will continue to fade as analysts adopt technical skills like SQL to manage shared processes.
AI-powered insights: Modeled data driven by AI will fill gaps in data availability, helping businesses extract actionable insights while fostering trust in decision-making.
First-party data strategies: Robust governance and privacy-focused data collection will be key to delivering personalized marketing that complies with regulations.
By embracing these trends, businesses can deepen their insights, optimize performance, and thrive in a complex analytics environment.
Final thoughts
2024 was a year of significant change, blending innovation with stricter compliance requirements to improve data accuracy and usability. These advancements have equipped businesses with the tools needed to navigate an increasingly complex analytics landscape. As we enter 2025, the opportunities for growth and innovation in analytics have never been more exciting.