When it comes to tracking website traffic and gaining insights about your customers, there are many options available.
Two of the most popular tools for website analytics are CPV Lab and Google Analytics (soon to be Google Analytics 4 or GA4). While both tools offer similar features, they have some key differences that may make one a better fit for your business than the other.
If you want to understand better what is Google Analytics 4 and what is different about it, check this article here.
In this article, we’ll compare CPV Lab and Google Analytics in terms of their features, pricing, and ease of use, so you can determine which one is right for your business.
Features
Both CPV Lab and Google Analytics offer a range of features that can help businesses track website traffic and gain insights about their customers.
However, CPV Lab has some unique features that set it apart from Google Analytics:
- Direct traffic tracking: CPV Lab offers direct traffic tracking, which allows businesses to track website traffic from sources such as Google Ads, Bing Ads, and other advertising platforms. This makes it easy to track the effectiveness of your ad campaigns and optimize your advertising spend.
- Customizable reporting: CPV Lab’s reporting dashboard allows businesses to create customized reports and track the metrics that matter most to them. This can help businesses make data-driven decisions and optimize their website for better performance.
- Fraud detection: CPV Lab uses advanced fraud detection technology to help businesses identify and prevent click fraud, ensuring that their ad spend is being used effectively.
- Additionally, it’s important to note that Google’s pixel technology has some limitations.
- It can only track your own offers and doesn’t support tracking of third-party offers with postback URLs. Moreover, it won’t function properly if third-party cookies are blocked.
- While Google Analytics 4 provides insights into the performance of your mobile and desktop pages, it lacks the capability to redirect traffic in any manner. This feature is essential for performance marketers who need to conduct A/B testing on different campaign approaches.
| CPV Lab & CPV One | Google Analytics | Google Analytics 360 | |
| Cloud Hosting option CPV One is hosted AWS servers so they are easily accessible all over the world, not matter where you run your campaigns | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| On Premises CPV Lab is a self-hosted performance marketing tracker with 10 years experience in helping marketers grow their profits | ✔️ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Basic Metrics All standard visitor metrics and reports including location, device, OS, and engagement behaviour. | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Track costs and automate campaign actions on specific networks | ✔️ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Channel Referrer / Campaign Tracking Full campaign tracking across multiple channels | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Heatmaps See when your campaigns are best performing, what day, day of week or time of day | ✔️ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Integrates with multiple ad networks, social platforms, and search engines Seamless integration with Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and other ad networks | ✔️ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Support Get friendly and knowledgeable support from a team of tracking experts | ✔️ | ❌ | ✔️ |
| Full Access to raw data via API or for self-hosted, via SQL | ✔️ | ❌ | ✔️ |
| Bot/Proxy filtering and detection filtering easily detect patterns and traits of bot traffic | ✔️ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Customer Journey detection | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Ability to redirect traffic for A/B testing purposes feature essential for performance marketers who need to conduct A/B testing on different campaign approaches | ✔️ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Event driven decisions | ❌ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| API integrations to synchronize Conversions and costs with other Traffic sources (like Microsoft Ads, TikTok, Facebook, etc) | ✔️ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Customer roles and dashboard With the White Label functionality you can have your own dashboard to share with your customers to check the results of their campaigns | ✔️ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Track third-party offers Feature useful for marketplaces or affiliate marketers | ✔️ | ❌ | ❌ |
Pricing
Pricing is an important consideration for businesses of all sizes.
While both CPV One or CPV Lab and Google Analytics marketing analytics, there are some differences in their pricing models:
- CPV Lab, the self-hosted tracking platform, offers you 100% privacy over your data (you own the data) and it starts with prices as low as $47/mo. It also offers a 14-day free trial for new users.
- CPV One, a cloud-based ad tracker, with a top AWS infrastructure, easy to scale based on your needs, with prices starting at $57/mo + 14 days free trial.
- Google Analytics: Google Analytics is free to use, but businesses can upgrade to Google Analytics 360, which offers additional features and support. However, pricing for Google Analytics 360 is not publicly disclosed and is based on individual business needs (which can go very high sometimes)
Ease of Use:
CPV Lab is easy to use, as the interface is intuitive. It has all the metrics and data points needed to have an accurate tracking of your marketing.
And with a 3rd party tracker like CPV Lab, you know you own the data.
As for Google Analtytics 4, it is very different from the old Universal Analytics and marketers have a very hard time using it. The reporting in GA4 is known to be highly configurable but very difficult to master.
- CPV Lab has a user-friendly interface that makes it easy for businesses to track website traffic and marketing campaigns and gain insights about their customers. It’s reporting dashboard is customizable and easy to navigate.
- Google Analytics 4 has a more complex user interface that it’s previous Universal Analytics, with a steep learning curve for beginners.
Some comments from users on a dedicated GA4 group about GA4 issues
Conclusion:
Both CPV Lab and Google Analytics offer a range of features that can help businesses track website traffic and gain insights about their customers.
However, CPV Lab’s unique features, such as direct traffic tracking, redirect traffic, tracking third-party offers and fraud detection, make it a better fit for businesses that rely heavily on advertising.
On the other hand, Google Analytics may be a better fit for businesses that want a more comprehensive view of their own website performance and mobile traffic and don’t rely as heavily on advertising.
Ultimately, the choice between CPV Lab and Google Analytics depends on your business needs and goals.
If you want to find out more about to use the CPV Lab cloud based solution, CPV One, jump in an check this article!
Here are some of the most common questions regarding GA4 tracking:
Can I import data from UA to GA4?
Unfortunately no, you can’t import your historical data from Universal Analytics to GA4.
Can I track Facebook Ads with GA4?
Yes, you can.
However, you need to know that it may take between 24 – 72 hours for GA4 to show the purchases from Facebook Ads in reports.
What Facebook metrics you can’t see in GA4?
You can’t see real time visitors or number of purchases.
Can I track my affiliate links with GA4?
Yes, you can do some basic tracking.
You need to head over to the Reports section, select Engagement, and then Events. From there, you can click on outbound-link-affiliate in the Event Category column to see a detailed list of your affiliate URLs and the number of users who clicked through.
However, for affiliate link tracking and performance marketing, it is better to use a dedicated affiliate marketing tracker.
Is GA4 good for affiliate marketing tracking?
GA4 can track affiliate links, however it doesn’t have all the integrations with traffic sources and affiliate networks that are a must for an affiliate marketer.
So, for affiliate marketing tracking it is better to use an ad tracker with predefined integrations with traffic sources and affiliate networks.
Can you track thrid party offers with GA4?
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) can only track your own offers and doesn’t support tracking of third-party offers with postback URLs.
Can I use GA4 to track my affiliate links?
No.
An affiliate marketer promotes offers from affiliate networks, so he doesn’t own the offers.
That means, any affiliate link promoted will redirect to a 3rd party offer. In order to track conversions back from the affiliate network you need to use Postback URLs, which are not supported by GA4.
Author: Julia Draghici
Julia is the CEO of CPV Lab and CPV One ad trackers. She has 15+ years experience in the software industry, from development to management. For more than 5 years she is helping marketers get the best out of their marketing campaigns by using a performant ad tracker. Passionate about entrepreneurship, business and performance marketing, Julia loves helping people!