Google Analytics 360 vs. Adobe Analytics comparison?

[lodhaazurlives]

Is there a specific reason why switching from Adobe Analytics to GA 360 is more appealing to people? Is it because GA 360 is more affordable or because it comes in packages with Analytics 360, Tag Manager 360, Google Optimize 360, Attribution, and Google Data Studio? kindly check here Visits Lodha Azur

[Jennifer_Dungan]

I don't know why anyone would ever want to do that... there is a perceived notion that it's cheaper... but only if you are trying to do basic things.... if you have complex needs you will be nickel and dimed to death.

Our org is looking at switching (because they think it will be cheaper)... even cutting out massive amounts of things that we can do today the assessment is still more expensive (since we would have to create rollups of some of our most combined sites and all the server calls in those rollups cost .5 of a server call, then we also have to try and replicate Activity Map - which GA cannot properly do, which means click tracking on every link, increasing the number of server calls). GA has no concept of a segment repository, so short of duplicating an existing report so you can have a copy of a segment that you built, you will have to recreate your segments for every report.

Most companies I have talked to who only have GA360 do 99% of their reports in Big Query / GCP because the interface of GA4 is so poor they can't do what they need (spending hours on SQL queries to pull reports, instead of the 10-30 minutes it would take in Adobe Workspace)...  many of these companies are switching from GA to Adobe.

As someone who handles the Adobe Analytics and (free) GA for our company.. I hate working in GA.. and when I have to for some of the smaller sites that only have GA I end up being frustrated and spend far longer to pull simple reports.

[Jennifer_Dungan]

I should just follow up on this.... after our investigation, GA turned out to be waaaayyy more expensive to try and get most (but still not all coverage that we have in Adobe), and still more expensive when we slashed out a bunch of stuff that we use every day....

[MattWi3]

Im thinking through a high level comparison between Adobe Analytics and GA4 (360). You mentioned expense. Please share the data or context, I'd love to know more. 

[Jennifer_Dungan]

GA basically nickel and dimes you to death... and also just GA isn't as efficient as Adobe.

So for starters, we make heavy use of Activity Map (which allows us to track interactions on every link in the site without inflated server calls)... GA's "enhanced engagement" tracks every click as a separate server call... so we had to account for all of that.

Second, we have a complex infrastructure...  30 "core" news sites, each with apps, classifieds, obituaries, reader's choice awards, digital editions, etc...   these 30 sites also have designations of our "Dailies" sites, and our "Communities" sites... we have many virtual report suites set up to make it easy for people to pull the context they need... in order to replicate all those combinations, we would have had to create many rollups (which in GA cost .5 per server call, for each server call pulled into a rollup).. in order to create the combinations used most often would mean every "site server call" would basically be charged 7-8 times under that pricing structure.

Then of course you have the Big Query license, and the costs associated to that.

And that doesn't even include all the "people" costs of having to rebuild all the reports, and training people, and the fact that GA has no concept of "saved" filters/segments, so having to rebuild those from scratch every report, or trying to copy from existing reports... but you still have the issue of "this definition changed... now we have to go back and update ALL of our reports....", so that would cause a lot of strain and time on an already too small team... 

[ezhil_raja]

Please note Google Optimize is no more, meaning there is no Target equivalent. Also, there is no equivalent for AEM, AEP, AJO, CJA, or Campaign as well. So, what exactly do you do with GA4 data? only reports?

[MattWi3]

In my head, I think that Adobe is more about end-to-end solutions and measurement for a personalized customer experience where as Google leans towards marketing measurement and optimization. The GA4 reports are horrendous. I don't know of anyone who actually uses them for reporting, however, the GA4 data is used to activate marketing initiatives in the Google marketing ecosystem. That's the power it has. 

[Jennifer_Dungan]

GA is a glorified "reporting" tool.. not an "analytics" tool.

And yes, the UI is horrendous... I don't know what they were thinking making it not only inaccessible to business users, but making analysis want to pull out their hair because it's so clunky....  I know people who are on GA4, and all their reports are done via SQL / Big Query.... 

Adobe: 30 mins for a powerful in-depth report

GA4: hours building and testing the SQL to pull into another tool like Tableau