About the native GA4 Meta pixel integration

Meta has released a new feature for advertisers: a native integration between Meta Ads and Google Analytics 4 (GA4). This could be a very welcome update for improving Meta ads campaign performance analysis within GA4. Let’s have a look what this could mean for you and how to set it up.

For who is this integration?

Imagine you just have a GA4 property tracking events on your website. Now this integration makes it very easy to integrate these events into the Meta dataset you want. So this will come in handy for people that have less knowledge about GTM or CAPI integrations. The implementation of Meta ads event tracking is simply a few clicks away.

Does it improve Meta’s representation in GA4?

The short answer is: no it does not. If you are looking for a way to optimise representation of Meta ads traffic in GA4, this is not it. There are many reasons why Meta, or any social channel for that matter, is underrepresented in GA4s acquisition reports. I have written an article about the reasons why: Meta vs GA4 discrepancies and how to reduce them. This feature only imports GA4 events into the Meta dataset for you to use in Meta.

What about data privacy?

Nowadays data privacy is an important topic. Meta claims to prioritize this by “placing data governance in your hands”. The integration gives you control over defining which traffic sources Meta can access from your GA4 data. That way you can be transparant about how your data is used.

Is it difficult to set up?

Accurate conversion tracking is very important for most advertisers. The integration makes this quite easy by facilitating the mapping of Meta conversion events to GA4. This integration eliminates the risk of mismatched events between the two platforms, providing a clear picture of how your Meta Ads traffic is performing on your site.

How to set it up

Then, of course the most important question is, how do I set this up? Before setting this make sure your GA4 event tracking is set up properly, otherwise you might do more harm then good. You can activate the integration from the Meta events manager. As mentioned, it could be that it’s not yet available in your account. In that case you need to be patient. If you do have it, follow along.

1. Navigate to it and on the lefthand menu go to partner integrations
2. Open the integration and agree to the terms of service

3. Connect to the Google account that has access to the matching GA4 property
4. Select the GA4 property from the list of accounts
5. Select the pixel you want to connect GA4 to
6. Choose which traffic sources you would like Meta to access in GA4

7. Map the events in GA4 to the events in the Meta dataset

Now your GA4 events are mapped to your events in the Meta dataset. Be sure to keep an eye on your setup, to verify that everything works as expected.

Conclusion

Check your Meta Ads account to see if you’ve been granted early access to this beta feature. If not, rest assured that Meta is gradually rolling out access. Hopefully this will give us some more insights into the actual performance of our Meta Ads campaigns. Happy analysis!