What is Cross-network in Google Analytics 4 ?

Updated: October 23, 2024

This article introduces the Cross-network channel in GA4.

What is Cross-network

There is a new channel called Cross-network in GA4, which is not available in UA.

According to the official documentation:

Cross-network is the channel by which users arrive at your site/app via ads that appear on a variety of networks (e.g., Search and Display).

Including Search and Display？

I believe many people will be very confused.

Cross-network Definitions

We are looking at Cross-network Definitions:

Source platform is “Google Ads”

AND

Google Ads ad network type is one of (“Cross-network”)

Cross-network includes Discovery, Performance Max and Smart Shopping.

So, in fact, the Cross-network channel refers to: Discovery, Performance Max and Smart Shopping.

• Discovery：With the ability to reach up to 3 billion people monthly on the YouTube Home and Watch Next feeds, Discover and the Gmail Promotions and Social tabs, you can now reach more potential customers as they browse everything from the latest fashion trends to new cooking recipe videos on popular Google properties.
• Performance Max is a new goal-based campaign type that allows performance advertisers to access all of their Google Ads inventory from a single campaign. It’s designed to complement your keyword-based Search campaigns to help you find more converting customers across all of Google’s channels like YouTube, Display, Search, Discover, Gmail, and Maps.
• Smart Shopping：With Smart Shopping campaigns, Google’s machine learning uses your product feed to create and show a variety of ads across different networks, including the Google Search Network, Google Display Network, YouTube, and Gmail. Our systems test different combinations of the image and text assets you provide, then select and show the most relevant ads, automatically.

These three types of campaigns can be promoted on different networks, so they are called  Cross-network.