Google Analytics | Demographic Data 101

Looking to add Google Analytics (GA) Demographic data into your ChannelMix Data Warehouse?  Here are some things that are good to know about how it works.

• GA data is pulled into ChannelMix at the View level.  Any filters that you have applied to that view will also be applied when your data arrives in ChannelMix.
• In order to get demographic data to show up, demographic reports must be enabled in the UI first. Click HERE for additional instructions on how to enable this feature. 
• The demographic fields are considered a part of the 7 dimension limit from GA.

Things to note when using the data for reporting:

GA Demographic data gets sampled by GA (meaning that GA will exclude any data where the user info gained could possibly be narrowed down too specifically). This is to keep user anonymity intact in the reporting. For example, Google won't give you data in cases where there was only one session for zip code 63383 with female users between the age of 18-25, because that would allow you to narrow that session down too far and is not anonymous enough. 

Additionally, if you've requested Age and Gender data together, GA does not return a '(not set)' value for Age or Gender. Said another way, GA will only return the data where it has a value for both Age and Gender. The only way the Sessions (or any other metric) in the GA Demographic data set will match the other GA data sets is if Google Analytics was able to capture the Age and Gender of every single session. This also holds true for other combinations of demographic data as well.

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