Today when I signed in Google Analytics, I saw Google had introduced Google Signal Beta in Google Analytics. By Google Signal, it is enhancing the experience of Advertising Features across cross devices using Google’s signed-in data.
By activating the Google Signal, you can unlock new cross-device capabilities and more.
Features of Google Signal
Advertising Features are being enhanced to help you better understand your customers across devices using Google’s signed-in data. This new setting upgrades your existing Advertising Features controls and enables:
New cross-device capabilities
Including new Cross Device reporting and remarketing.
More insights using Google data
Google Signal provides more profound insights on your customers using Google data such as enhanced Audience and Demographics reporting.
All existing Advertising Features
Google Signal already includes all current Advertising Features such as Display & Video 360 impression reporting and remarketing, Google Display Network impression reporting and remarketing, and Remarketing Lists for Search Ads.
Existing Google Analytics create remarketing audiences from your Google Analytics data, and share those audiences with respective linked advertising accounts.
But by activating Google Signal, Google Ads and other Google Marketing Platform advertising products can serve ads in Cross Device-eligible remarketing campaigns to Google users who have turned on Ads Personalization.
Google Analytics only collects information per your tracking-code configuration, as well as Google advertising cookies that are present.
But Google Signal works deeper. Google Signal collects additional information about users.
Google Signal tries to recognize the user behaviour of different platform and how they react with different ads. So apparently Google is trying to analyze the user behaviour pattern with ads and their reaction and using the latest artificial intelligence to deliver more relevant and targeted ads to their users.
What will happen to the data of who have turned on Ads Personalization?
When users turn on Ads Personalization, Google can develop a holistic view of how those users interact with an online property from multiple browsers and multiple devices. For example, you can see how users browse products on your site from a phone, and later return to complete purchases from a tablet or laptop.
Because of the large volume of data generated by users who have turned on Ads Personalization, Google can estimate from that data the cross-device behaviour of your entire user base.
By default, Google signed-in data expires after 26 months. However, if the Data Retention setting is set to anything shorter than 26 months, the Google signed-in data will respect this shorter time frame.
The Cross Device reports include only aggregated data. No data for individual users is ever exposed.
How to Activate Google signals?
To report on cross-device user journeys and remarket to signed-in Google users, you need to activate Google signals.
To activate Google signals, you need Edit permission for the relevant property.
Sign in to Google Analytics.
Click GET STARTED in the blue notification banner at the top of the page, or navigate to Property column > Tracking info > Data Collection and follow the prompt in the blue dialogue.
Click on the information and activation panels.
Read the information about Google signals, then click CONTINUE
Activate Google signals.
Select the properties for which you want to activate Google signals (all properties of the account, this property only, or a specific subset of properties in the account).
Click ACTIVATE if you want to activate Google signals immediately.
Click DECIDE LATERto activate at a later time.
Before you activate Google signals, you also see a dismissable message (“Activate Google signals BETA”) in Analytics that provides access to the same information and activation panels. If you dismiss the message before you activate, or decide to active later, follow the preceding steps.
After you activate Google signals, the switch for the feature is set to ON.
With Google signals activated, you can:
Show Cross-Device remarketing ads to Google users who have turned on Ads Personalization.
See new user-based data in the Cross-Device reports. Keep in mind that this new data is available starting from the date you activate Google signals.
To change the setting, navigate to Property column > Tracking info > Data Collection.
