Meta has formally began rolling out the long-anticipated integration between GA4 and Meta Occasions Supervisor. Whereas it’s not completely clear what profit the mixing offers, this publish walks by way of learn how to set it up and what we all know (and don’t know) about what this would possibly really do.
In case you have entry, you’re more likely to get a notification that appears like this…
The excellent news is that the mixing isn’t notably tough, although the method can take some time relying on how full and correct your GA4 occasions at the moment are.
The primary factor this integration does is permit advertisers to map GA4 occasions to Meta occasions. The query, as I write this, is what profit that gives. I handle this and different questions on the finish of this publish. Earlier than you set this up your self, it’s best to work by way of the uncertainty of dangers and advantages first.
When you’re able to arrange your GA4 integration with Meta Occasions Supervisor, proceed studying beneath…
Get Began
You may click on the button to “Join Google Analytics” from the alert proven within the screenshot above. In any other case, go to Accomplice Integrations inside Occasions Supervisor.
Beneath “Analytics,” it’s best to see Google Analytics.
You’ll then see this…
Click on “Get Began.”
Set-up will take six steps.
Connect with Google
To attach your Meta adverts account to Google, you’ll first see this…
You’ll have the choice of connecting all advert accounts inside your Enterprise Portfolio. Solely do that if all pixels inside your advert account have corresponding GA4 occasions which might be able to map.
When you’ve completely learn Meta’s phrases and your authorized group has authorized them (!!??), click on “Subsequent.”
Log in with the Google account that corresponds to the GA4 occasions that you just’ll wish to map.
Click on “Proceed.”
Examine the field for the Google Analytics account and properties you’ll wish to connect with Meta.
Then click on “Subsequent.”
Map Occasions
Now that you just’ve chosen the GA4 property, you’ll want to pick the Meta dataset to map to it. I’ve chosen a pixel.
Subsequent, you’ll must outline your sharing preferences. Choose which visitors sources to permit Meta to entry in Google Analytics. The choices are “All visitors sources” and “Solely visitors coming from Meta.”
I’ve chosen “All,” although it’s unclear to me what the dangers and advantages are of choosing both one. I’ll handle that later.
Subsequent, Meta will mechanically select conversion occasions that you would be able to map with GA4 occasions. I haven’t seen any documentation on this, however my principle is that occasions you’ve used for optimization are eligible. I’m by no means clear on why you possibly can’t manually choose from any occasion, however I’ll handle that later.
In the event you’re fortunate, Meta will mechanically discover the GA4 occasion that maps to your Meta conversion occasion. This assumes that you just’ve arrange your GA4 occasions to report on the very same conversions as your Meta occasions. You can even manually choose the GA4 occasions if Meta hasn’t mechanically discovered them.
In an ideal world, all of this may occur cleanly in your first strive. The Meta occasions you care about most will seem and can map completely to the corresponding GA4 occasions. If not, scroll right down to the “Errors” part on this publish.
In any other case, click on “Submit” and also you’ll get this whimsical affirmation.
Validation
Subsequent, you could look ahead to validation. Meta says that this course of can take between two and 7 days to finish (or in uncommon instances, as much as 14 days).
Initially, it’s going to appear to be this with a “Pending” label.
In case your course of is something like mine, that ought to shortly swap to “Energetic” with a inexperienced dot. However there’s no signal of anything happening. Simply be affected person. Validation continues to be occurring within the background.
Finally, it’s best to see “Connection High quality: Pending” within the higher proper nook.
As soon as validation is full and the whole lot is so as, it’s best to see that connection high quality is “Excessive.”
If it’s “Low,” I handle that within the “Errors” part beneath.
Errors
Hopefully, the whole lot works cleanly. However there are many causes chances are you’ll run into points. In the event you don’t have GA4 occasions set as much as seize the very same conversions as your Meta occasions, that might want to occur first. Meta will then want a number of days of information to validate.
In the event you run into issues, it might be associated to one of many following…
1. Mapping Error.
If information is coming by way of that exhibits your GA4 and Meta occasions are occurring on completely different pages, you gained’t be capable of map them. In the event you’ve arrange both of those occasions just lately (that day, for instance), be affected person. It may take a number of days.
2. No Meta Occasion.
This isn’t a lot an error as an annoyance. Meta mechanically selects the occasions that you would be able to map to corresponding GA4 occasions. You might have solely two or three obtainable, despite the fact that you will have dozens of Meta conversion occasions firing in your web site.
Whereas I haven’t seen this addressed in any of Meta’s documentation, I consider that solely occasions you’ve used for optimization functions throughout the advert set are thought-about eligible.
Primarily based on expertise, it seems that occasions have to be used for optimization in the course of the previous two months. I discovered that when an occasion falls outdoors of that window, it disappears (or perhaps my expertise was fully random).
3. Choose Solely One Occasion.
Let’s think about a situation. Perhaps you haven’t created an ordinary occasion for generate_lead in GA4. However you’ve created particular person occasions for each occasion of lead technology in your web site. It might not comply with finest practices, however that’s what you’ve completed.
Because you don’t have the one occasion to map to your Lead occasion in Meta, you can in any other case choose all the varied GA4 occasions that symbolize a lead. Meta even helps you to do it with checkboxes.
However while you try this, you’ll get a mushy error that it’s “usually finest to map 1 Google Analytics occasion kind to 1 Meta occasion kind.”
It appears to be like like you possibly can nonetheless technically submit a setup that makes an attempt to map a single Meta occasion to a number of GA4 occasions, however you’d most likely wish to keep away from that based mostly on this language.
4. Visitors From Meta Possibility Grayed Out.
Through the Sharing Preferences step, advertisers have the choice of sharing “all visitors sources” or “solely visitors coming from Meta.” Or, a minimum of, you might need each choices. I initially did after I shared the screenshot about this.
However now the “Visitors from Meta” choice is grayed out…
After I hover over the place I’d choose that choice, I get this message:
This selection is unavailable as a result of you could have greater than 50 utm_source parameters. To pick out this selection, go to Adverts Supervisor and guarantee there are fewer than 50 utm_source parameters and that a minimum of utm_source=fb or utm_source=meta is included as one of many URL parameters for the adverts on this account.
This is senseless. I can’t think about I’ve used 50 completely different utm_source parameters for adverts in Adverts Supervisor. And I actually don’t have that many energetic now.
In case you are getting this error, I’ve no data for you. It’s simply as mysterious to me.
5. Low Connection High quality.
Meta recommends coming again to the GA4 integration web page commonly to verify on connection high quality. If it shows “Low,” hover over the error for particulars.
My connection was initially “Excessive” and I’ve a principle why it then switched to “Low.” After I clicked to assessment my setup, I seen that Meta was displaying three occasions for mapping. I had submitted solely two.
As I discussed earlier, solely occasions you’ve used for optimization in the course of the previous two months look like eligible. The Podcast Play customized occasion is why I believe that. After I initially began this course of, Podcast Play was one of many occasions I may map. It then disappeared. After digging round, I noticed that I simply hit two months since an advert set final run optimized for that occasion.
As soon as it disappeared, I created a brand new advert set that I ran for just a few days. I hadn’t thought something of it, however now it’s showing once more. Is it a coincidence? Perhaps. However this rationalization is a minimum of an informed guess.
It’s attainable, if not going, that my connection standing switched to “Low” when this new, unmapped occasion appeared. When that occurs, chances are you’ll merely must resubmit with the corresponding Meta and GA4 Podcast Play occasions.
There clearly could possibly be different explanations for a low high quality connection in case your GA4 occasions and Meta occasions aren’t all firing for a similar actions. I hope that the “Low connection” message would share these particulars if that is so.
Open Questions
I’ve a number of questions associated to the setup strategy of this integration. Meta’s official documentation is missing, to place it mildly. However these questions all had me scratching my head…
1. Why aren’t all occasions eligible?
The truth that Meta solely surfaces some occasions for mapping (presumably these you’ve optimized for just lately) makes this complete course of way more sophisticated than it must be. In my instance, I couldn’t map Podcast Play initially, so as soon as I began an advert set optimized for that occasion, my connection high quality switched to Low. I may have averted this by merely mapping all of my occasions from the start.
It additionally doesn’t make sense from an information completeness viewpoint. Let’s say that this integration helps enhance conversion attribution for my mapped occasions (extra on that in “Unknown Dangers and Advantages”). That’s nice for these occasions. However simply because I don’t optimize for an occasion doesn’t imply that I don’t care about it.
I add columns for a pair dozen conversion occasions, and I would like all of them to get any potential profit from this integration.
2. Why is it “higher” to map one GA4 occasion to 1 Meta occasion?
It is sensible, in principle, why mapping a single GA4 occasion to a single Meta occasion could possibly be cleaner. But it surely wouldn’t essentially be higher or completely different if you happen to completely chosen all the GA4 occasions that symbolize that single Meta occasion. Whether it is higher, it could be useful if Meta defined precisely why that’s the case.
In any other case, Meta ought to simply take away the flexibility to pick a number of occasions within the first place.
3. When would you choose “solely visitors coming from Meta”?
Granted, my confusion right here could possibly be eradicated if I had a clearer concept of why we’re doing this within the first place (extra on that in a minute). However I’m certain I’m not the one one who struggles with what to do with this.
Unknown Dangers and Advantages
I used to be initially hesitant to set this up as a result of Meta’s completed such a foul job of speaking the dangers and advantages of doing so.
1. Advantages?
You might recall the screenshot of the preliminary alert about this integration in the beginning of this publish:
Advertisers who keep a high-quality connection will get early entry to new advert system updates that supplied a further 5% common improve in conversions pushed by Meta of their analytics instruments, in a 2025 experiment.
Wow. That’s one extremely convoluted and complicated message. Let’s try to interrupt this down…
WHAT new advert system updates?
Advertisers who keep a high-quality connection will get entry to those updates. However what does this even imply?
A further 5% common improve in conversions?
A lot to unpack right here. It was the “new advert system updates” that supplied this improve. How?
Of their analytics instruments?
Wait, so the 5% improve was in attributed conversions in Adverts Supervisor or in GA4? This makes it look like it could be in GA4 — or different analytics instruments.
Total, Meta has completed a really dangerous job speaking why we should always arrange this integration. It will appear to me that there are three main potential advantages:
1. It improves Adverts Supervisor attribution. Presumably, this is able to be as a result of GA4 has some occasions that Meta didn’t. It’s unclear how GA4 would give Meta visibility into conversions it couldn’t already see from different information sources and the API.
2. It improves Meta-attributed attribution in GA4 and different reporting instruments. This is able to solely be attainable if this integration implies that advertisers are sending information to Google, which it’s not completely clear if that’s the case. However this might make sense since GA4 notoriously underreports Fb and Instagram-driven conversions counting on visitors sources.
3. Each. Perhaps?
It’s merely not clear why somebody ought to implement this integration. And as soon as arrange, you’d suppose it could then grow to be extra apparent, but it surely’s not. No charts, graphs, statistics, nothing.
As soon as carried out, the advertiser can be anticipated to refer again commonly to the Google Analytics web page in Occasions Supervisor to verify the connection high quality. Why can’t we be notified when there’s an issue? And what’s the influence of a “excessive” or “low” high quality connection?
As I write this, there’s solely a single web page of official documentation on this integration. It’s a easy step-by-step on getting it arrange. However there’s nothing about “why” this can be a good concept or what the potential constructive and unfavorable influence could also be.
By way of outcomes, I can’t say that I’ve seen a noticeable improve or lower in efficiency. However I don’t know that anybody ought to count on that, no matter what this integration really does.
2. Dangers?
I’ve seen hypothesis that this implementation fingers off attribution to Google, thereby prioritizing completely different guidelines for attribution. The consequence could possibly be far fewer reported conversions.
This makes little sense to me. I gained’t even go into the explanations as a result of all of it feels nonsensical.
I don’t see a big danger because it’s very straightforward to disconnect the connection, however I could also be lacking one thing.
3. Educated guess
The primary query I’ve, even after implementing this integration, is What does this do?? My educated guess is that that is complementary. It gained’t damage your outcomes. It would assist your outcomes. Or chances are you’ll not see any distinction.
Personally, I wouldn’t undergo the hassle of implementing this for a consumer with out the dangers and advantages being clear. Meta ought to finally make that way more apparent.
In the event you’re like me and also you’re curious and keen to take what I consider is a low danger, go forward and set it up for your self.
Your Flip
Have you ever carried out this integration? What do you suppose?
Let me know within the feedback beneath!
