Linking GA4 Big Query Data

Why:

Connecting Thirty-One Circles to your GA4 data in Big Query is the best data source to build audiences from.

Exporting your GA data to Big Query is quick and easy to set up from the admin menu of Google Analytics, the export provides granular information about every event on your website or app, allowing you to create behavioural data segments on all events GA has recorded, not just transactions.

Enable both "Daily" and "Streaming" exports from Google Analytics: 

To get the most up-to-date data to form audiences we advise enabling both "Daily" and "Streaming" exports from Google Analytics.

Without streaming enabled, the daily export will lead to a 24-hour delay in targeting data i.e. forming audiences on the day before yesterday rather than yesterday's data. 

What:

To connect to your GA4 data in Big Query, you need to grant “Big Query Admin” access to Thirty-One Circles within your Google Cloud Project (GCP). We require admin access to set up regular Big Query exports to our data warehouse, where we build audiences.  

How:

To grant access to your Big Query Data, follow the steps below:

  1. Navigate to https://thirtyonecircles.com/app/audiences/connections/, Select the “Add New Data Source” button and then pick GA4 / Big Query.
  2. From the pop-up, copy the Username. Your username should look like "app-account@p31c-a-XXXXX.iam.gserviceaccount.com" (it is project specific), then click the link below or navigate to https://console.cloud.google.com/iam-admin/iam. 
  3. Login to the Google Cloud Platform, if you are not already, and double-check that your Google Analytics data is being saved to the same Google Cloud Project as you are currently in.

To check you are in the right GCP project: 

  1. Navigate to https://console.cloud.google.com/bigquery
  2. Expand the dropdown number 1 on the first image, and if you are in the right GCP project, you should see a data source with analytics_XXXXXXX where XXXXXXX matches your analytics ID.
  3. For extra safety, we recommend expanding dropdown number 2 and double-checking that the yellow and orange boxes match up like in the second image.
Check Project 1
Click Me
Check Project 2
Click Me
  1. Now that you have double-checked that you are in the right GCP project, navigate back to https://console.cloud.google.com/iam-admin/iam and click the grant access button at the top of the page. In the sidebar that opens:
  1. Paste the username you have copied from Thirty-One Circles into the “New principles” field.
  2. Under Assigned Roles, select “Big Query Admin” – this can be found most easily by typing the name.
  3. Hit Save, and you are finished in Google Cloud.
  1.  Navigate back to Thirty-One Circles and select “Check Connection”. You should see your analytics data source populate in the selection drop-down. Follow the Thirty-One Circles wizard to select this and save the new connector.

When:

Once connected, your data will start to be extracted from Google Big Query. Over the next 24 – 48 hours, the GA4 data will get fully extracted, and a process of ID unification will occur to create a single unified customer view from the potentially hundreds of analytics identifiers. This process is fully automated, so you can still make any audiences you would like in the meantime, and they will start populating in the platforms as soon as the data is ready.

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More questions?

Contact our support team at support@thirtyonecircles.com who are always ready to offer advice and assistance. 

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