Google Analytics Adds Campaign Benchmarks

Google is introducing a new benchmarking feature to Google Analytics that will allow businesses to compare their campaign performance with anonymised data from similar companies.

The feature is being added through Ask Advisor, Google’s AI-powered assistant for its marketing and analytics products. It is designed to help businesses understand whether their campaign results are performing within a typical range for their industry.

Rather than looking at campaign figures in isolation, marketers will be able to use the new tool to get more context around their results.

How Google Analytics Benchmarking Works

The new benchmarking functionality uses anonymised averages from businesses considered similar to the user.

Through Ask Advisor, users can ask questions about their campaign performance using everyday language. The system can then provide comparisons based on relevant peer data.

This could help answer questions such as whether a campaign’s engagement, acquisition or conversion performance is unusually high or low compared with other businesses in the same sector.

The feature forms part of Google’s wider development of Ask Advisor, which was introduced as a cross-product AI tool for services including Google Ads, Google Analytics, Merchant Center and Google Marketing Platform.

Google currently lists Ask Advisor as being available in beta for English-language accounts.

What Data Is Used for Benchmarking?

Google Analytics already has benchmarking capabilities that allow businesses to compare their performance against a group of similar companies.

According to Google’s documentation, existing benchmarking can show the median, 25th percentile and 75th percentile for a selected peer group.

The comparisons cover several areas of Analytics, including:

• Acquisition
• Engagement
• Monetisation
• Retention
• The Analytics Home overview

The peer group is initially determined by the industry category selected when a Google Analytics property is created.

Google can also use information from website URLs and app attributes to help determine which businesses are considered comparable.

Businesses Can Change Their Peer Group

An important part of the existing benchmarking system is that businesses can change their peer group.

Google provides 25 main industry categories, with further subcategories available underneath them. These can become quite specific, with categories reaching down to areas such as athletic footwear.

Choosing an appropriate peer group is important because a comparison is only useful if the businesses included in it are genuinely similar.

For example, comparing a small specialist retailer with major multinational businesses could produce figures that are less useful when assessing campaign performance.

Businesses should therefore review their current peer group and make sure the selected category accurately reflects what they do.

What Does This Mean for Marketers?

The new feature could make it easier for marketers to put campaign results into context.

Without benchmarking, a business may know that its conversion rate, engagement or acquisition figures have increased but still have little idea of whether those results are particularly strong compared with competitors.

Benchmarking can provide an additional reference point.

For example, a campaign might appear to be performing well based on previous internal results, but comparison with similar businesses could reveal that its performance is actually below the industry average.

The opposite could also be true. A business may see relatively modest results but discover that it is outperforming similar companies once external benchmarks are taken into account.

This additional context could help marketers make more informed decisions about where to increase investment and where campaigns may need improvement.

Google Expands Ask Advisor

The benchmarking announcement is part of a wider set of updates involving Google Analytics and Ask Advisor.

Google is also introducing AI-generated summaries at the top of Google Analytics to highlight changes since a user’s previous login.

These summaries should not be confused with Google Search’s AI Overviews. They are generated within Analytics and are intended to provide users with a quick overview of changes to their own data.

Users can also choose to receive notifications by email or phone and decide how frequently they receive them.

More AI Features Coming to Google Analytics

Google also announced several developments for Google Ads and Analytics.

Google Ads is receiving personalised insights cards designed to highlight information based on an individual business’s account.

The company has also announced a new Dashboards feature that can create charts based on text prompts.

The idea is to make it easier for users to explore and visualise their data without having to manually build every report or chart.

Dashboards is also expected to come to Google Analytics, although Google has not provided a specific release date.

Ask Advisor, the new Google Ads insights cards and Dashboards are currently listed as beta features for English-language accounts.

Benchmarking Could Give Campaign Data More Context

The introduction of campaign benchmarking could be useful for businesses that want more than simply their own historical performance data.

By comparing results with anonymised figures from similar businesses, marketers can get a better understanding of where their campaigns stand within their industry.

However, the quality of any comparison will depend heavily on the peer group being used. Businesses should make sure their selected industry category accurately reflects their market before relying heavily on the results.

Google has not yet provided full details on when the new campaign benchmarking feature will become available to all users or exactly how Ask Advisor will present the comparisons.

For now, the update is another example of Google using AI to make analytics data easier to interpret and turning complex performance information into more accessible insights for marketers.