So, when promoting on native ad networks, we usually miss some important information on our targeted audience – age, gender, or even audience interests.
Without having access to such information, we might be showing the wrong product and angle to the targeted audience, therefore we may end up getting a pretty low conversion rate.
Since most native ad networks don’t give us an option where to get such information, this workaround can help us get some actionable insights about our targeted audience. Allowing us to tweak our campaigns and improve our performance.
Considering that native ads tend to perform better when using landing pages, with the help of Google Analytics, we can use our landing pages to extract additional information about our page visitors, not just to warm them up.
Please check the screenshots below to get a better idea of what I am talking about.
Age reporting:
Gender reporting:
Audience Interest:
As you might notice, from this test campaign audience I was able to easily get the Age, Gender as well as Affinity Categories, and In-Market Segments according to Google’s data.
Here’s a quick rundown of my setup…
Step 1: Create a Google Analytics Property
This step is pretty easy! Simply go to https://analytics.google.com then sign up for an account using your existing gmail account.
Then, once inside Google Analytics, follow these sub-steps:
b. Give your new GA account a friendly name (e.g. your domain name)
c. Select Web under the property type you want to measure
d. Enter your landing page name and URL, as well as set the reporting time zone.
Pro Tip: When selecting the time zone, it’d be great to set it on the same time zone your native ad network is, so that you can easily compare stats between the two if needed.
Step 2: Add Google Analytics code to my landing page(s)
Once you finish creating your new GA property account, you will be redirected to your GA tracking code, which you will need to add to your page.
Copy your new Google Analytics tracking code, then paste it between your <head> … </head> tags of your landing page.
Step 3: Enable Demographics and Interests reports
Sign in to your Google Analytics account, then go to Audience > Demographics > Overview
Gender Reporting:
Click enable as in the above example screenshot and you’re done.
Step 4: Pass Traffic source information (campaign ID, ad ID, site ID)
Now, since most of us use click trackers, we will pass our traffic source information like campaign ID, ad ID, and site ID using our click tracker tokens.
Here’s an example of passing such information using Voluum tracker.
a. Edit your landing page then append the following URL parameters tracking string on your landing page URL.
b. Replace the utm parameter values using custom variable tokens on your tracker.
Gender Reporting:
c. Save your landing page changes on your tracker.
Important note: As you may notice, we are using custom variable tokens and not the tokens provided by the native ad network (traffic source). This is because we are adding such information using our tracker and not directly from the traffic source. Make sure to check your traffic source configuration to properly set the names of your custom variable tokens. You’re all set! All you need to do is let your campaigns get some traffic in order to be able to see such data on your Google Analytics account. Now, as you may notice, this guide opens the doors to potential optimizations on your funnel. Helping you to easily tweak images, and angles or add more appealing products based on your audience demographics and interests.
But you are not limited to that only! Especially if you can run your offers on Google Ads 
With the following additional step, you can easily collect and create audiences for Google Ads, using your landing page visitors tracked with Google Analytics.
This way, once your native visitors land on your landing page, and like to search on Google about your product or offer, before taking any action. You can easily get them back to your funnel without leaving a chance to your competition to convert an already warm-up buyer.
Gender Reporting:
Or, in case you’d like to level up your retargeting, you can retarget your audience on Display and YouTube ads from the same Google Ads account.
Here’s how to send your Google Analytics “pixeled” audience to your Google Ads account:
1. Login to your Google Ads account then go to:
Tools & Settings > Setup > Linked Accounts
Gender Reporting:
2. Select Google Analytics to view the list of properties you can link on your Google Ads account.
3. Find the property of your native landing pages, then click on Link.
Gender Reporting:
4. Enable the view and site metrics options, then click on Save.
Now that you have linked your GA with G-Ads account, you can create your audience in just a few clicks by going to:
Tools & Settings > Shared Library > Audience Manager > Create New Audience
In the create new audience window, simply add a name to your audience, then under rule settings enter the domain or path of your landing page(s) in the matching rule conditions (example below).
Gender Reporting:
Once you’ve saved your audience, you can create your retargeting ads on all Google ad formats that you’d like.
Happy re-targeting!
