Segmenting users into audiences is a powerful capability within Google Analytics 4 (GA4). This feature is especially useful for running ads to the most important groups of users for your business. 

Provided that you have linked your GA4 property with your Google Ads account and enabled Google Signals, you will be able to see your audiences in the Audience Manager tab of Google Ads.

Since the Audience Builder plays a pivotal role in running paid ads, the experts at Tagmate have curated this extensive guide on GA4’s audience builder feature.

In this post, we’ll explore how GA4’s Audience Builder allows you to define, build, and utilize custom audiences for your business needs.

Let’s begin:

What are Audiences in Google Analytics 4?

Audiences represent specific groups of users sharing common attributes. You can create audiences in GA4 to segment users based on:

• Demographic data like age, gender, location
• Behavioral data like events, pages visited
• Engagement metrics like sessions, duration
• Predictive metrics like purchase probability

Essentially any dimensions, metrics, or user actions in GA4 can be used to build audiences.

As new data comes in, audience membership is evaluated to add or remove users matching the criteria. Audiences help you analyze and take action on particular subsets of users.

Key Use Cases for Analytics Audiences

There are several valuable ways audiences can be leveraged:

Reporting - Add audiences as a segment or filter to analyze performance for that group. For example, view conversion rates for your high-value customers.

Personalization - Use audience membership to trigger personalized experiences. Show certain users specific content when they meet an audience definition.

Advertising - Create targeted ad campaigns by exporting audiences to tools like Google Ads. Only reach users who meet your audience criteria.

Messaging - Notify specific audience segments through platforms like Firebase notifications. Send cart abandonment emails just to users in your abandoned cart audience.

Analysis - Gain insights by comparing metrics across different audiences. See how brand new users convert compared to loyal repeat customers.

Audiences enable advanced segmentation and personalization based on your important metrics and user attributes.

Creating Audiences in the GA4 Audience Builder

The Audience Builder provides a centralized workspace to create and manage audiences. There are three options:

1. Templates - Pre-configured templates with common dimensions to customize.
2. Suggested - Fully defined audiences based on common use cases.
3. Custom - Build a custom audience from scratch using any data.

Let’s explore each option...

Using Audience Templates

Templates provide a head start with predefined dimensions or metrics to filter on.

For example, the Geo template populates the country, region, metro, and city dimensions to easily build a location-based audience.

You can directly save the template or edit the conditions before saving to finalize the audience.

Using Suggested Audiences

Suggested audiences are pre-built based on common use cases.

Examples:

• Active Users - Users with activity in the past 7 days
• Cart Abandoners - Added to cart but did not purchase
• High Value - Top 10% of users by revenue generated

Use suggested audiences as-is or customize them further before saving. They provide a jumping off point tailored to different business needs.

Creating a Custom Audience

This option allows building an audience completely from scratch using any dimensions, metrics, or user behavior data.

Best practices for custom audience creation:

• Use inclusion and exclusion conditions to precisely define the audience.
• Set a membership duration - how long users stay in the audience when criteria is met.
• View the estimated audience size based on your data.
• Create audience triggers to take action when users enter an audience.

Custom audiences provide complete flexibility to segment users however you need.

Audience Builder Capabilities and Settings

Some key settings and capabilities within the Audience Builder:

User scope - Set conditions based on user behavior across all sessions, a single session, or a single event.

Membership duration - Days a user remains in the audience after meeting criteria. Max 540 days.

Sequences - Chain multiple conditions together that must occur for audience membership.

Triggers - Fire a conversion event when users enter the audience.

Size estimate - See the potential audience size based on your criteria and data.

Inclusion/exclusion - Add groups of conditions users must meet or must not meet to be included.

These settings allow you to fine tune audience definition and behavior.

Exporting Google Analytics Audiences

Once created in GA4, audiences can be exported for use in other tools including:

• Google Ads
• Display & Video 360
• Search Ads 360
• Campaign Manager 360

Exporting enables targeting your GA audiences in campaigns across Google’s ecosystem.

To enable audience sharing, complete these steps:

1. Link your GA4 property to the desired Google account
2. Enable personalized advertising during linking
3. Turn on Google Signals for remarketing

With that configured, you can seamlessly activate GA4 audiences in your external tools.

Demo Walkthrough of Creating an Audience

Let’s walk through an example of building a custom audience from scratch in the GA4 demo account:

1. Navigate to the Audience section in the GA4 admin.
2. Click “+New audience” and select “Create custom audience”.
3. Give the audience a descriptive name and optional description.
4. In the inclusion conditions, select the Purchase event to include users who have made a purchase.
5. Set additional parameters like membership duration, audience trigger, etc.
6. Add exclusion conditions as needed, like exclude Users from California.
7. Review the estimated audience size based on your conditions.
8. Save the audience once your criteria is configured.
9. Link to desired Google account like Google Ads to enable sharing.

Following these steps allows you to create a reusable audience tailored to your goals.

Key Takeaways

Some core points to remember about GA4 audiences:’

• Audiences segment users based on dimensions, metrics, events or predictive data.
• Use the Audience Builder to create audiences from templates, suggestions, or custom.
• Audiences enable advanced reporting, personalization, advertising, and analysis.
• Export audiences to Google tools like Ads for activation in campaigns.
• Audiences provide powerful, flexible user segmentation for your business.

Defining important audiences is key to gaining insights into your customer base and driving impact through personalization.

Start exploring the audience builder in GA4 to unlock more value from your analytics data!

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