[GA4] Migrate App campaigns to use Google Analytics 4

Google Analytics 4 provides comprehensive, privacy-centric analytics to understand user behavior across both web and app-all in one place. Its AI-powered insights also help you optimize your campaign performance. Learn more about the benefits and features you get access to by using Google Analytics 4.

This guide will outline the process of moving from another conversion source to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) with the Google Analytics for Firebase SDK.

• If you are running existing App campaigns or web campaigns with app goals, this guide will help you move through the process with less disruptions.
• If you are not currently running App campaigns or web campaigns with app goals, you do not need this guide and should follow the steps to Measure and optimize your App campaign performance using Google Analytics 4.

While GA4 is recommended for the best performance for your ads, these instructions can be used generally to migrate between any supported app SDK simply by following the same steps with the other SDK, wherever GA4 is written.

On this page

• Before you begin
• Identify events and campaigns to migrate
• Identify audiences to migrate
• Compare app conversions
• Compare audiences
• Migrate campaigns and conversion goals
• Migrate audience segments

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Before you begin

• Before starting the migration process, it’s best that you follow the steps to Measure and optimize your App campaign performance using Google Analytics 4 first.
• You should already be using the Google Analytics for Firebase SDK.
• You should have linked GA4 with all Google Ads accounts linked to third-party app analytics.
• You should have already added minimum events to the app, marked them as conversions, and imported into Google ads.

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Identify events and campaigns to migrate

For migration, it's recommended to implement all custom events that you track with your third-party SDK - for example, AppsFlyer or Adjust - either identically or as close as you can manage.

Make sure to implement all events you plan to use for campaign bidding, whether in App campaigns for installs, App campaigns for engagement, or web campaigns with app goals.

Create a custom report

1. In your Google Ads account, click the Insights and reports drop down in the section menu.
2. Click Report editor.
3. Click + Custom.
4. Select the Table report format.
5. Set the date range to “Last 30 days”.
6. Add the following rows:
   1. Campaign
   2. Campaign Type
   3. Conversion action
   4. Conversion source
7. Add the following columns:
   1. Conversions
8. Click the Filter button .
9. Choose Conversion Source and select Third-party app analytics.
10. Click Apply.

This report will provide a list of all campaigns that have successfully spent in the past 30 days and what conversion events they have spent on. You can use this as a guide for likely conversion events you’ll want to recreate using the Google Analytics for Firebase SDK and which campaigns you’ll migrate.

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Identify audiences to migrate

For best performance, any engagement campaigns that you migrate to GA4 should also replace any audience segments using another source to use segments based on GA4 signals.

This section will guide you through creating a list of campaigns with the segments they are targeting, which will be recreated based on GA4 signals.

Create a custom report

1. In your Google Ads account, click the Insights and reports drop down in the section menu.
2. Click Report editor.
3. Click + Custom.
4. Select the Table report format.
5. Set the date range to "Last 30 days".
6. Add the following rows:
   1. Campaign
   2. Campaign Type
   3. Audience Segment
   4. Audience segment type
7. Add the following filters:
   1. Audience segment type:
      • Under "How they have interacted with your business"
      1. Custom combination segments
      2. App users
8. (Optional) Further filter to only the campaigns identified for migration when you Identify events and campaigns to migrate.
9. Click Apply.

This report provides you with a list of all audience segments currently being targeted by your campaigns. For best performance, any campaigns that migrate to GA4 bidding should also replace any targeted audience segments to use segments based on GA4 events.

For each segment in the list, create a duplicate segment as well as a new segment with the same rules but with Firebase as a source, both with membership durations of 7 days. Once these populate, compare membership sizes between the two segments. Follow the guide to create new segments and perform validations when you Compare audiences.

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Compare app conversions

Don’t make a new campaign bidding on Firebase events to compare with a campaign bidding on third-party SDK events. If these campaigns are attracting the same users, they can bid against each other, leading to poor performance from both campaigns.

1. Use the list of conversions gathered when you identified events and campaigns to migrate.
2. Make sure that the listed conversions are implemented in your app, and imported into Google Ads.
3. Follow the guide for your App Attribution Partner (AAP) in this article to minimize discrepancies sent from your AAP to Google Ads.
4. Compare the listed conversions following this article and follow any steps to reduce discrepancies.
5. Once satisfied with the discrepancy between the conversions, proceed to Campaign and audience migration. If migrating engagement campaigns, proceed to Compare audiences.

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Compare audiences

Comparing audience sizes should follow conversion comparisons, as solving validation issues with your conversion events will also resolve issues that cause deviation in audience segment membership.

To validate that the conversion event signals are populating the same memberships for your audience segments, create duplicate segments with the exact same rules, and a new audience segment based on GA4 signals with 7 day membership durations. Monitor the membership population of both the segments for deviations. Follow the detailed instructions below.

Note: These newly created segments won’t be used for targeting, only for validation. Instead, the original segments will change source.

Create new audience segments for validation

1. Using the list of targeted audience segments gathered when you identified audiences to migrate, there will be 2 types of segments: App Users and Custom combination segments. Only App Users segments need to be recreated and validated. These segments that are contained in the custom combination segments will be migrated.
2. Create new App User segments with the same rules.
   1. Open each existing segment and edit it.
   2. Create a new user segment.
   3. Select Analytics platform and match the existing segment you’re recreating.
   4. Match the rules from the existing segment.
   5. Under pre-fill options, choose Start with an empty segment.
   6. (Optional) Add a distinguisher in the name or description of the segment to mark it for validation only as these segments won’t be used for targeting.
   7. Click Save.
3. Follow the same steps as the second step to create another segment, but select Firebase as the analytics platform.

Compare new segments

1. After creating both the duplicate third-party segment and new Firebase segment, wait 7 days for both to populate.
2. Open both segments in “Audience manager”.
3. Set the date range to "Last 7 days".
4. Compare membership sizes between the 2 lists.
5. Perform the following checks to reduce the discrepancy:
   1. Linking
      1. Make sure that both the AAP and GA4 are directly linked to the account on which you’re trying to verify segments.
      2. Link with Google Ads
   2. All conversions are imported
      1. Make sure the matched Firebase list is not trying to populate with conversions that are not yet created/imported from GA4.
      2. Import conversion events to Google Ads
6. After making changes to reduce discrepancies, wait 7 days again to track changes in membership.
7. Once satisfied with membership discrepancies, proceed to Campaign and audience migration.

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Migrate campaigns and conversion goals

Migrating account-level goals

1. Refer back to the list of app events that you wish to migrate, from Identifying events and campaigns to migrate.
2. In your Google Ads account, click the Goals icon .
3. Click the Conversions drop down in the section menu.
4. Click Summary.
5. Make a note of all events in the list from the previous step are Primary conversion actions. Note what GA4 events will be used instead.
6. Set the third-party primary goals to secondary.
7. Set the GA4 secondary goals to primary.

Migrating campaign-level goals

1. Refer back to the list of campaigns bidding on app events that you wish to migrate when you identified events and campaigns to migrate.
2. Confirm that all campaigns to be migrated have passed your expectation for discrepancies, as determined when you compared conversions.
3. In your Google Ads account, click the Goals icon .
4. Click the Conversions drop down in the section menu.
5. Click Summary.
6. Make a note of the full conversion names. You should already have the third-party conversion names from the previous step. Take note of the GA4 event names to which you’ll be migrating.
   
   
7. Edit each campaign in your list by going to the Campaigns.
   1. Open Settings and scroll to Bidding.
   2. If measuring installs, select the GA4 event under "How do you want to track install volume"?
   3. If measuring in-app actions, under "Which actions are most important to you"?
      1. Search for the full GA4 event name noted in the previous step.
      2. Remove the third-party event by clicking the x.
      3. Click the GA4 event to add it.
8. Click Save.

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Migrate audience segments

The standard procedure is to flip the campaigns and monitor performance for a week. If there aren’t any major issues, then flip the audience segments one week later.

1. Refer back to the list of audience segments you wish to migrate and the campaigns that are targeting them from the identified audiences to migrate.
   1. Confirm that each segment to be migrated is only targeted by campaigns that are also migrating. If there is a segment being targeted by both a migrating campaign and a campaign not migrating, a new segment will need to be created with GA4 that the migrating campaign should target.
2. Open each segment to be migrated.
3. Click the 3-dot icon in the top right corner and click Edit list.
4. Take a note of the rules listed under Actions.
5. Change the source to Firebase.
6. Recreate the rules noted in step 3, updating any event names to the correct Firebase event name.

   • Note: If you accidentally skip Step 4 and the rules were lost when changing the source, just click cancel instead of save and start over. The original rules will still be there.

7. Click Save.