All resources
We are living in a new, dynamically developing reality. Everything is changing: users’ behavior, data requirements, business needs, and the ways they work with data. The old approaches to analytics are no longer effective, and they certainly won’t work in the future post-cookie world.
As privacy regulations tighten and technology evolves, analytics tools are being reimagined to support flexible data models, cross-platform tracking, and cookieless measurement.
That’s why existing analytics suites are being overhauled, and new privacy-centric tools are launching.
Note: This article was initially published in November 2021 and last updated in July 2025 to include additional context on how technological advancements are influencing the future of analytics.
Google Analytics is one of the most popular digital analytics software tools, allowing you to analyze marketing efficiency and website visitor behavior in depth.
Back in October 2020, Google announced the most significant change to Google Analytics ever: Google Analytics 4, a new version that’s very different from the traditional “Universal” Analytics. It was big news, but came as no surprise.
The evolution of Google Analytics over the years has led to the development of Google Analytics 4.
This is not the first time we’ve been introduced to a new platform. In 2005, Google bought the tracking platform Urchin, and since then, the company has released several new versions of its analytics service.
However, most of these releases have tracked either websites or app properties, not both.
Previously, businesses needed two platforms - Google Analytics and Firebase - to analyze both websites and apps separately. Managing data from multiple sources made it difficult to achieve a comprehensive and unified view across apps and websites.
In 2019, Google took a big step and launched a beta property called App + Website. It was basically Google Analytics for Firebase but with web tracking capabilities. Now that it's out of beta, Google has renamed it Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and added numerous new features.
The new Google Analytics 4 comes with a range of key features that make it significantly different from the old version of Universal Analytics, and many people have questions about the new platform and its implications for the future of analytics.
We answer them in this article.
Many users used to wonder: Is Universal Analytics going away for good, and should we switch to the new version right now? What will happen to the old version?
As of July 1, 2023, Google stopped processing new hits in all standard Universal Analytics properties. On July 1, 2024, Google permanently shut down access to both standard and 360 properties, removing interface and API access and beginning the deletion of stored data. That means no data is accessible via the UA interface, API, or Looker Studio anymore.
After July 2024, only exported data , such as CSV downloads or BigQuery backups , remains retrievable. If you didn’t export your data before the deadline, there’s no way to access it now.
Previously, users had the option to run Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4 in parallel. That is no longer possible. Since UA is fully sunset, the only way to track and report live analytics data today is through Google Analytics 4 (GA4).
GA4 is now the default and only option for new analytics properties. Universal Analytics cannot be re-enabled. If you haven't set up GA4 yet, you must do so immediately to resume tracking. This isn’t a recommendation , it’s a requirement.
To preserve data continuity, you should import any exported UA data into BigQuery or your preferred data warehouse. This enables year-over-year analysis and supports historical comparisons alongside your GA4 reports.
Key reasons to prioritize GA4 setup and migration:
GA4 isn’t just a replacement , it’s a fundamentally different analytics tool with its own learning curve. The sooner you adapt, the more control you’ll have over your tracking, reporting, and insights.
Remember: The migration process can be complex, especially for organizations with custom goals, ecommerce tracking, or third-party integrations. Plan a structured GA4 implementation and reporting strategy to avoid long-term data gaps.
So what has changed? In short… a lot.
Google Analytics 4 uses a completely different data structure and collection logic. GA4 now emphasizes privacy-first data practices and offers a powerful set of tools for understanding your audience, analyzing performance, and complying with strict privacy regulations like the GDPR, CCPA, and India’s DPDP Act. It also integrates deeply with Google Ads and BigQuery, making it easier to track the full customer journey across channels.
Here’s what you’ll find in Google Analytics 4:
If your business has both a website and a mobile app, Google Analytics 4 allows you to track user interactions across both platforms within a single, unified property. Previously, you needed one property for web data and a separate Firebase setup for app tracking. GA4 removes that separation by combining web and app data in one place.
Thanks to its cross-device tracking architecture, GA4 makes it easier to follow how users engage with your brand across different touchpoints, like viewing a product on desktop and completing a purchase in your app. This unified view helps you understand the full customer journey and supports more accurate attribution and reporting.
For businesses with omnichannel strategies, this feature simplifies analytics setup and provides a clearer, more complete picture of user behavior across devices.
Google Analytics 4 has deeper integration with Google Ads. You can use data from GA4 to build custom audiences that are more relevant to your customers and target them with paid or organic campaigns.
Besides, GA4 will report on actions from YouTube-engaged views that occur in-app as well as on the web.
According to Google:
With new integrations across Google's marketing products, it's easy to use what you learn to improve the ROI of your marketing.
A deeper integration with Google Ads, for example, lets you create audiences that can reach your customers with more relevant, helpful experiences, wherever they choose to engage with your business.
Marketers now get a more complete view of campaign performance, with the ability to track conversions from both Google and non-Google paid channels, including YouTube video views, Google Search, social media, email, and even Reddit Ads.
Google is a leader in machine learning, and GA4 brings that expertise into analytics by using advanced algorithms to detect trends and forecast user behavior. Its machine learning capabilities make it easier for marketers to plan their next steps by highlighting where to focus time and resources for better outcomes.
GA4 supports predictive metrics such as purchase probability, revenue prediction, and churn probability, helping you anticipate customer actions based on historical data.
As of 2025, GA4 now also includes automatic Key-Event Suggestions. These use machine learning to identify high-value user interactions and prompt you with one-click options to promote them as conversions, streamlining setup and optimization.
Alongside this, GA4 provides automated insights directly in the reporting interface. These insights continuously monitor your data and alert you to significant shifts or emerging trends, allowing faster decision-making backed by intelligent analytics.
One of the most powerful features in GA4 is its native BigQuery integration, which is available to all GA4 properties at no license cost. You only pay for data storage and queries once you exceed Google Cloud’s free tier. Unlike Universal Analytics, which offered this only to 360 users, GA4 gives everyone the ability to export raw, unsampled event data directly into BigQuery.
As of 2025, every GA4 property can now live-stream data to BigQuery, enabling near real-time analysis. This lets analysts blend GA4 data with CRM, ad platform, or backend sources, and build advanced attribution models, retention analysis, and conversion pathing using SQL.
BigQuery access unlocks powerful capabilities such as:
With this setup, you’re no longer limited by sampled data or interface restrictions. GA4 and BigQuery together give marketing and analytics teams full control over their data pipeline and reporting logic.
Google Signals is an advertising reporting feature that enables marketers to collect cross-device data from users who are signed into their Google account and have ad personalization turned on.
Launched in 2018, Google Signals has become a much more powerful part of GA4. In the past, its data was only available in a limited number of pre-built reports. As of 2025, cross-device remarketing and demographic reporting powered by signed-in Google users now extend to all standard GA4 reports, offering a more complete and unified view of user behavior.
All data from Google Signals is aggregated and GDPR-compliant, with no personally identifiable information exposed or stored.
You can now enable or disable Google Signals data collection by region, helping you stay compliant with local privacy laws like the GDPR or India’s DPDP Act.
By activating Google Signals for your GA4 property, you can:
This expanded integration helps marketers improve personalization and attribution while staying compliant with evolving privacy regulations.
In Universal Analytics, data was split across different hit types, such as pageviews, events, social interactions, and ecommerce hits. In Google Analytics 4, everything is now treated as an event, whether it’s a pageview, scroll, video play, or purchase.
This event-based model is one of GA4’s core architectural changes and enables a consistent schema across both web and app platforms. Each interaction is logged as an independent event with optional parameters, allowing for deeper context and more flexible analysis.
GA4 supports four types of events:
One of the key advantages in 2025 is the ability to attach flexible parameter slots to each event. This lets you include detailed metadata, like product ID, video duration, or user status, without needing to define rigid custom dimensions upfront.
GA4 also introduces advanced funnel analysis and pathing visualizations, which let you analyze how users move through your site or app with more granularity than ever before.
Although GA4 still supports session data, it is no longer the foundation of reporting. This shift requires a complete rethinking of legacy reports built on Universal Analytics’ session-based logic. Existing SQL queries and Looker Studio dashboards will need to be rewritten to align with GA4’s event schema.
It’s a major change, but also a powerful upgrade. And if you're migrating complex tracking setups, platforms like OWOX BI can help streamline the transition to GA4 and ensure your reporting stays actionable and future-ready.
GA4 was built for a privacy-first web. Since its launch, it has added features that help businesses comply with data protection laws globally:
These tools future-proof your analytics setup as third-party cookies phase out in 2025 and global regulations become stricter.
Google Analytics 4 takes a privacy-first approach to data collection, helping businesses comply with modern regulations such as the GDPR, CCPA, and India’s DPDP Act, while still enabling accurate performance measurement.
Unlike previous versions, GA4 is built on an event-based model, where every user interaction, whether a pageview, click, or purchase, is tracked as an individual event. This model provides greater flexibility and unifies data across web and app platforms using a consistent schema.
GA4 includes several built-in features designed to help businesses collect data responsibly while staying compliant with global privacy laws.
With these capabilities, GA4 empowers organizations to collect high-quality, actionable data while maintaining full compliance with the world’s most demanding privacy standards. It ensures that businesses can measure performance, forecast behavior, and optimize campaigns, without compromising user trust.
Universal Analytics is now officially shut down. That means parallel tracking is no longer an option, and GA4 is not just the future, it’s your only option for live data collection. If you’ve been waiting to switch, the time is up. Your priorities now are: importing any saved UA data, implementing GA4 correctly, and rebuilding your reports on GA4’s event-based structure.
But let’s be honest, migrating to GA4 isn’t simple. The entire data model has changed. Metrics like Engagement Rate and Key Events replace familiar KPIs. The GA4 interface is different, and your Looker Studio dashboards built on Universal Analytics are likely broken. Doing all this manually takes months, and a lot of SQL rewriting.
That’s where OWOX BI comes in.
OWOX BI has already helped large companies migrate smoothly to GA4, with zero reporting downtime. And with OWOX BI Smart Data, you can skip the painful retrofitting and get straight to insights. OWOX BI provides advanced solutions for seamless analytics migration and reporting, helping businesses leverage the latest technologies for their data needs.
OWOX BI Smart Data is a tool that allows marketing and management specialists to effortlessly build an unlimited number of ad hoc reports to analyze your audience in different slices and get valuable insights. The platform enables clear and actionable presentations for stakeholders, making it easier to communicate insights and support decision-making.
How can Smart Data help with GA4 migration?
If you're getting started with GA4, here’s how you can begin working with OWOX BI:
Step 1. The analysts at OWOX will help you import your saved Universal Analytics data, whether exported as CSV files or stored in BigQuery, and normalize it into GA4-compatible event tables. This process includes identity resolution, which connects your UA session data with new GA4 event data, making year-over-year comparisons possible even though UA is no longer active.
This solves the biggest pain point for most teams: the shift from UA’s session-based model to GA4’s event-based structure. Without Smart Data, analysts often spend months rewriting SQL queries, adapting old dashboards, and dealing with broken Looker Studio reports.
But with OWOX Smart Data, you can skip all that manual work. It automatically aligns your legacy UA data with your new GA4 schema, so marketers and decision-makers can continue working with consistent, ad hoc reports, without needing to touch SQL.
Step 2. Once your UA history is imported, OWOX BI Smart Data builds a unified data model that abstracts away the differences between Universal Analytics and GA4. This model allows you to generate ad hoc reports instantly, without writing a single line of SQL.
Whether you're analyzing historical UA metrics or live GA4 events, Smart Data ensures reports don’t break, even when schemas change, because all logic is managed at the data model level, not tied to raw fields.
Smart Data also includes:
By connecting Smart Data, your team gains a future-proof reporting layer that pushes clean, analysis-ready tables to BigQuery, Looker Studio, Power BI, or Tableau.
Book a demo today and see your UA history and GA4 event data side by side, with no code, no downtime, and no stress.
Google Analytics 4 now supports cost data import via CSV, SFTP uploads, or the Cost Data Import API, but the native process remains manual, error-prone, and time-consuming.
That’s where OWOX BI comes in. It offers a fully automated pipeline that streams ad spend data from platforms like Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, and Reddit Ads, directly into GA4.
Your cost data appears automatically inside Acquisition > Non-Google cost and Advertising workspace reports, making it easy to analyze ROI, ROAS, and blended CAC across all channels.
Important: To use cost import correctly in GA4, ensure your campaign URLs include the utm_id parameter (campaign identifier). This enables GA4 to properly attribute costs to sessions.
With OWOX BI, you eliminate manual uploads, reduce reporting delays, and maintain clean, reliable ad spend data across your analytics and BI stack.
Google Analytics 4 has become a vital tool for modern marketers, offering smarter insights and real-time decision-making. Its advanced features help optimize campaigns, track ROI, and adapt to evolving user behavior.
Turning GA4 insights into revenue is easier than ever. Predictive Audiences can be exported to Google Ads to improve ROAS, while pricing-related drop-offs can be reduced with quick page updates. GA4 webhooks also help recover churn-prone users through automated CRM emails.
For marketers in 2025, GA4 is the control center for smarter decisions. Use it to centralize cost and conversion data, activate AI-powered audiences, recover signal via Consent Mode, and pinpoint friction in your funnel using lead-gen and drop-off reports, all without leaving your analytics stack.
Getting your GA4 data into reporting tools shouldn’t require scripts or SaaS lock-in. With OWOX’s free open-source connectors, you can easily stream GA4 events, cost data, and ad performance metrics into Google BigQuery or Google Sheets , no manual exports or paid ETL tools required.
These connectors let you:
You stay in control of your stack , with flexible scheduling, full transparency, and zero monthly fees.
Google Analytics 4 is now the standard. With Universal Analytics shut down, every live property runs on GA4’s event-based, privacy-focused architecture.
By fully adopting GA4, businesses are equipped to measure, optimize, and grow confidently in a privacy-first world.
