ADOBE CUSTOMER JOURNEY ANALYTICS

Adobe Customer Journey Analytics vs. Google Analytics.4 (GA4)

With Google Universal Analytics sunsetting, change is on the horizon. And that’s a good thing. It’s time for an analytics solution built for unlimited growth, one that gives you a holistic view of your customer using real-time data from across channels.

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Ready for a long-term commitment? Adobe is a partner that grows with you.

Google is moving customers to Google Analytics 4 (GA4). But it’s not an instant update. It’s a completely new implementation that could put your existing data at risk. Even if the process goes smoothly, you may be left with limitations that make it hard to get the cross-channel insights you need to deliver personalised experiences at scale.

Adobe Customer Journey Analytics gives you more.

Customer Journey Analytics is our powerful, AI-driven analytics solution that gives you deep insights at every touchpoint. With real-time cross-channel data analysis, it delivers a range of benefits:

Integration of all your historical Google Universal Analytics data — in as little as a day.
Streaming cross-channel data collection — including online and off-line — resolved into a single person or account ID.
AI-driven insights to improve segmentation, show objective attribution and spot anomalies.
Privacy Shield - A data governance framework solution to help Adobe customers keep their data secure with data source labelling, policy creation to ensure compliance and automated enforcement to prevent policy violations.

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Learn why Forrester named Adobe a leader in The Forrester Wave: Customer Analytics Technologies, Q2 2022.

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Dive deeper to learn how much more you get with Adobe.

Analytics tracking

	Adobe Customer Journey Analytics	Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
Digital data?	Yes. Measure digital sources beyond web and app, such as home devices, connected cars, gaming consoles, e-readers and more.	Yes. GA4 measures web + app and brands must add GA4 to a site with Universal Analytics to collect data from the website and app.
Visitor data stitching?	Yes. Stitch IDs from multiple devices and channels into single “person” and retroactively restate historical data, enabling customer journey use cases such as call deflection and click-to-brick.	Limited. GA4 provides a cross-device view across web and app data, requiring the same unique identifier be used across both devices. Data stitching applies to a point in time forward with no historical restatement.
Omnichannel data?	Yes. Control how your online and off-line data is connected in Analysis Workspace on any common person ID, enabling attribution, segmentation and journey analysis across your customer dataset.	No. GA4 measures data streams from iOS app, Android app and Web. Data imports bring in off-line data as a data source via uploaded CSV. Imported data is not able to restate historical data and file deletion cancels the join.
Streaming media and OTT tracking?	Yes. Heartbeat streaming measurement captures all events within video or audio clips, including OTT devices and visuals for average minute audience, concurrent viewers and playback time spent.	Limited. GA4 doesn’t have 10 second heartbeat tracking and brands use enhanced measurement events to capture basic KPI’s for streaming media, such as starts, completes and quartiles.

Usability and reporting

	Adobe Customer Journey Analytics	Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
On-the-fly calculated metrics?	Yes. Combine metrics on the fly to create unique mathematical calculations and new metrics that can be applied to segments.	No. Users must have editor rights to create a customised metric, requiring modifications to the tracking code. Metrics are set up on the property level.
Reusable segments?	Yes. Drag-and-drop interface lets you build segments and apply them to reports, revealing high-value customers and insights that improve business performance.	No. Conditions for event segments must all occur within the same event. For Google Analytics 4 properties, segments are only available in Explorations. Segment data is sampled and only include up to 10 per project.
Unlimited dimensional breakdowns?	Yes. Support for customised fields and different options for enriching data to breakdown your omnichannel data into multiple views by dimension and dataset (e.g. by device, CRM status, product view etc.).	No. GA4 has limited dimensional breakdown capabilities, making it hard to understand conversion by reporting dimensions (e.g. conversion rate by product page). Additionally, a dimension or metric may be greyed out when one is incompatible with other dimensions or metrics applied to a report or exploration.
Attribution?	Yes. Adobe provides 10 rules-based models and algorithmic attribution. Boost attribution rules with a best-fit algorithmic model, helping you to discover attribution use cases across paid, earned and owned media.	Limited. Data-driven attribution is available, however it’s a blanket attribution towards Google advertising, which benefits paid search and can creating inaccurate marketing ROI.
Journey visualisations?	Yes. Journey IQ is a set of customer journey measurement features to show customers moving between known and unknown and across channels. Also, cohort (retention, churn, latency), fall out, flow and cross-device analytics.	Limited. GA4 Explorations provides Cohort, Funnel and Path visualisations. Pathing is limited to page and screens. Cohort tables are device-based, not user-based. A funnel step cannot be based on a metric.
Collaborative interface?	Yes. Adobe Analysis Workspace is a one-stop-shop for customisable projects, templated reports and a dedicated learning section covering different features. The Labs section lets users test and provide feedback on new potential features.	No. Customers must log into two different interfaces to see reports vs. their Explorer dashboard. Reports and explorations both provide insights into your web and app data with occasional differences in the data shown in each area. Some dimensions and metrics available in reports aren’t supported in explorations.

Data collection

	Adobe Customer Journey Analytics	Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
Dataset management?	Yes. Merge, manage and maintain data easier with a flexible, harmonised data schema apart from the hit-visit-visitor model. Using a standardised data model, you can reconcile various data channels (with disparate formats and schemas), combined logically for business.	No. Google allows Admins to create up to 100 properties per account. 360 customers can create up to 2 additional types of properties, subproperty and roll-up properties.
Flexible data views?	Yes. Apply non-destructive “lenses” to view your customer data. Similar to virtual report suites, Data Views are filtered looks at data with distinct session, timezone and attribution settings. Multiple data views can be created for a single dataset.	No. Subproperties have an additional cost for data. The cost of events in each subproperty is one half the cost of the events in the source property, per the terms of your 360 contract.
Multiple data sources?	Yes. Adobe has exchange integrations with multiple data sources, such as CRM, call centre, social activity and mobile measurements.	Limited. Google has an integration with Salesforce Marketing Cloud which enables you to see campaign, usage and content data.
Adobe Real-Time CDP for activation?	Yes. Adobe provides real-time insights that let you create segments ready for cross-channel activation for downstream marketing activities within Adobe Real-Time CDP.	No. Google does not own a customer data platform but is able to activate against insights through Google Signals, using data associated with users signed into Google.

Data democratisation

	Adobe Customer Journey Analytics	Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
Project sharing?	Yes. Democratise your data through sharing and curating projects to various users within your organisation, depending on their business goals, roles and needs.	Limited. There is no report or feature-level restrictions to users, all user-level restrictions are on an account and property level. You can share an exploration to a user in read-only mode, but only if they have property access.
Component sharing?	Yes. Adobe provides project curation so you can limit sensitive components and information before sharing a project to a group or user. This includes tags and annotations for projects.	No. GA4 allows you to share data on the account and property level but not on the report view level.
Scheduled reports?	Yes. Adobe allows users to share projects and define read and write options, users to share to, components and save as the landing page for users.	Yes. GA4 allows you to share reports to all users on a scheduled frequency. There is a limit of 400 scheduled emailed reports per user per view.
Excel plugin?	Yes. Adobe provides an excel plug-in that helps users easily create customised reports and perform specialised analysis in Microsoft Excel.	No. GA4 does not currently provide an excel plug-in for deeper data analysis and manipulation.

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