Hello, this is remarkably more complicated than you'd expect. If you scroll down to method 2 in this linked article, you'll have a way to set up the trigger in GTM that you can use for your Google Ads conversion tag. Good luck! www.analyticsmania.com/post/pages-per-session-conversion-google-analytics-4/#how
Super helpful video, thank you! I have one question: I'm trying to create this event, but in the tag editor, it says "Measurement ID" instead of "Configuration Tag." Is that something I need to set up separately?
This is really just due to a Google change. You don’t need to set up anytime else separately. Place your GA4 measurement ID (from your GA4 data stream in your GA4 admin panel) and you’ll be good to go. And you can read about that change if you’re interested right here: www.rootandbranchgroup.com/new-google-tag/ Thanks for watching and I’m glad it was helpful for you. 😎
Glad to hear it, Yuriy! Have you been able to set up a Campaign report in GA4 so you can see any of your UTM tagged traffic? If not, I'd recommend this video as time allows: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-wcvg_HciQs0.html Wish you all the best! Zack
Hello there! Did you publish the GTM container code after testing? I'm sure you thought of this, but I'm asking because I've done this myself on numerous occasions and it's been the reason. ; ) If you have published, let me know if the event is still not showing up for you. Typically, there can be a 24 hour delay after publishing until you see the event data in your GA4 event reports, but that time should have elapsed by now. Keeping fingers crossed for you. Good luck and Godspeed!
Hi Eric, Yes, you should see the event in your Events reporting. Although, if you've created any event parameters with your GA4 event, you'd need to register those as custom dimensions (www.rootandbranchgroup.com/ga4-custom-dimensions/) before seeing them in your reports. Question for you: was the page timer event working properly when you tested in GTM preview and debug mode? I'd double check that first, and then I'd also double check to confirm that you've published the GTM container (I've been guilty of forgetting that second part more than once in my life!). Best wishes to you. Zack
Hey man, great video! Q: How long does it take for the "event" to show up under Events in GA4 from GTM? I don't see mine, and it's been 40 minutes. Thanks!
Hi Jack, great question. I’d give it 24 hours. I think Google might say 24 - 48, even though it’s sometimes faster. If it’s working in GTM preview and debug mode, you should be fine but kind of frustrating / odd that we need to wait for the “real” confirmation in our reports. Good luck and Godspeed to you!
@@rooted-digital Hi, I followed all steps in your video and set up the GTM Tag and trigger, and in the preview mode it works fine, the Trigger is firing after 1 minute. My question is whether the event will be imported automatically? I haven't created an event for the timer in GA4, do I have to do this manually? Or will the event including its data be imported/created automatically? Thank you very much in advance!
Thank you, very useful. But this only fires if the visitors stay on one page only, right? I set it up and if I am browsing and switching between pages and the TM code reloads, it does not count.
Hello, yes that is correct. This will only fire an event when the timer has been hit on a specific page. Can I ask, what are you hoping to track? If you want, for example, to have a record of how often you have an engaged session (not pageview) of 60 seconds, I believe you could do this by changing your timer for counting engaged sessions. That is step #3 on this 10 step set up guide (www.rootandbranchgroup.com/ga4-setup/). And here's the GA4 support article that might have some other relevant info. support.google.com/sa360/answer/12653359?hl=en Good luck to you!
How do you use this tag/trigger event to adjust bounce rate? Also, I would like to use this to create an audience (in Google Ads) for retargeting web traffic that ONLY includes people who were on the site for longer than one minute.
Good questions. A couple answers. - In GA4 there is not a tag setting that you can use to adjust the bounce rate as you could in UA. This is because "bounce rate" is fundamentally different in GA4 as compared to UA. Totally separate calculation. Check out this overview of the GA4 engagement rate (bounce rate is the inverse of engagement rate in GA4): www.rootandbranchgroup.com/ga4-engagement-rate/ - You can make changes to affect your bounce rate by adjusting your timer for engaged sessions in GA4. Check step 3 in the tutorial below: www.rootandbranchgroup.com/ga4-setup/ - In terms of audiences, you could create an audience based on users who have your new 1 minute timer event. The sound quality isn't great, but here's a video showing how to create GA4 audiences. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-tbFUMc0dz64.html Best of luck!
@@rooted-digital thank you for all this valuable info! One follow up: is it possible to set a timer so that you can see engaged traffic (3+ seconds) but also see your normal (all) traffic stats? Like a filter. Just curious to see the engaged traffic but don't want to filter the entire data just in case
You're 100% right. This approach in the video is only useful for tracking the time spent on individual pages. If you want to track the duration of the entire session, it's quite different. Here are 3 things that I think are related. 1.) GA4 is built differently from UA (the prior version of Google Analytics) and isn't built in a way to nicely accommodate session duration conversions. With that said, check out item 3 below. 2.) GA4 *does* track average "engagement time" per session using the "engagement_time_msec" event parameter. If you want to read how that works, I did my best attempt here: www.rootandbranchgroup.com/ga4-user-engagement/ 3.) Here is a blog from someone else who outlines a workaround to track session duration conversions in GA4. twooctobers.com/blog/track-session-duration-conversions-in-ga4/ Personally, it's been more useful for me to focus on different metrics in GA4 but I know some folks still really do like this one. Best of luck!
Hi! Thank you for this! I have found that the conversion goal is extremely inflated compared to the same duration goal in UA. Even with the '1' limit in GTM, the event seems to fire multiple times per session. E.g someone is on there for 9 minutes and a 3 minute timer fires 3 times. Let me know if I'm doing something wrong or if there is a fix for this, thanks!
Hmmm...If you look at your Events report (in engagement section) how do your sessions compare to your engaged sessions and to your 1 minute timers? Here's what I see on my end for the last 28 days: 12,285 session starts 10,085 1 minute timers firing 8,328 engaged sessions (user_engagement event) This seems like a plausible set of numbers to me and I haven't had reason to question the accuracy until your note. Is the relative relationship between those 3 metrics on your end similar? Or do you see way more 1 minute timers firing?
@@rooted-digital I have a 3-minute timer but this is how everything compares: 4,135 session starts 2,018 3-minute timers firing 4,262 engaged sessions (user_engagement event) I'm not sure why my engagement sessions are higher than the timer - possibly because mine is 3 minutes? When i test my 3 minute timer even in debug I see the same conversion fire twice if I sit on the event for 3 minutes. ALSO more interesting is the 3-minute duration goal in UA there have only been 407 session duration completed. Which is while below the 2,000+ I am seeing in ga4.
Do you already have your audiences created? Here's a video on audiences, just in case: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-tbFUMc0dz64.html If you're looking at your Events report (Engagement -> Events) and want to see event count for a specific audience, you can hit Edit Comparisons in the top right and apply the specific Audience you want to look at. Hope that helps. Good luck and Godspeed!
Thank you so much for such a great video. I can see my timer event in debug mode but how I can convert that into the event section so that I can import that to Google ads? I can't see any existing event
Hi there, do you see the timer event in your GA4 data now? Sometimes it can take GA4 some time after a new custom event has been created in GTM for the event data to fully show up in GA4. If it's not there yet, I'd double check to make sure you've published the most recent version of the container. And you can mark the event as a conversion in the Configure menu in GA4 (let me know if you need help with finding this) and then import it to Google Ads.
@@rooted-digital Yeah you are right. It took up to 24 hours to show auto-generated and I manual events. Another thing, in existing events there is scroll (created by GA) How do I know depth of scrolling and customize it.
@@digimediagrow3845 good news. Glad to hear it. In terms of the scroll event, the default enhanced measurement 'scroll' event in GA4 fires at 90%. I just made a video showing how to get additional detail. This video shows the process of creating data at 25%, 50%, 75%, and 90% scroll depths. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-m1jVbh79ZnM.html Also, can I ask you a question? I published a blog yesterday about GA4 event parameters. Event parameters and custom dimensions were (perhaps still are) the least intuitive parts about GA4 event tracking for me. If you'd be willing to give this a read, I'd love to get your take. Is this helpful? What is still unclear? Or did you find these things to be a little less confusing than I did at first... www.rootandbranchgroup.com/ga4-event-parameters/ Thanks, Zack
Hi Zack, I followed all the steps shown in the video. I have created a tag and trigger in GTM that is firing in preview mode correctly. But that timer event doesn't appear in the existing events section in GA4 which you showed at 8:39 in your video. I can not see it even in debug mode. May I know what steps I need to follow to enable the time spent event?
Hi Ajinkya, have you published your GTM container to push everything live? If everything is working properly in GTM preview mode, I can think of two potential options: 1.) The container hasn't been published to show the most recent changes Or 2.) It just needs a little more time. Assuming your container has been published and everything is live, I'd give it 24 hours and come back and check to see if you're seeing the event in your engagement reporting tomorrow.
