Question from user:
I want to show the campaign users were taken to a landing page by. Therefore, am I right in saying I need to use first user campaign dismenions over session dismenions as this would show just my paid campaigns rather than other campaigns a users session may have?
Aka if the user came from a paid Facebook or LinkedIn campaign I was to show they ce from it and not a different source
Answer from Nabil:
The short answer is:
You are correct in your thinking that you need to use the user-scoped dimensions for attributing a user’s initial arrival from a paid social campaign.
Specifically, you should use the ‘First user campaign’ dimension.
This dimension captures and retains the campaign that was responsible for introducing a new user to your website, effectively tagging that user with the paid campaign for their entire lifespan in your reports.
The session-scoped dimensions, like ‘Session campaign’, will change if a user returns via a different campaign or source in a new session, which is why they are less reliable for initial paid campaign attribution.
The long answer is:
Your goal is to see which paid Facebook or LinkedIn campaign drove the new user to the landing page, and for that, the ‘First user campaign’ dimension is the correct choice in GA4.
GA4 offers four main scopes for campaign and traffic source dimensions: User, Session, Event, and Item.
The User scope, which includes dimensions like ‘First user source’, ‘First user medium’, and ‘First user campaign’, is sticky and is assigned to the user the first time they visit your site.
This ensures that every subsequent action that user takes, whether it’s a page_view, a login, or a purchase, can be tied back to the specific paid social campaign that acquired them.
In contrast, the Session scope, using dimensions like ‘Session campaign’, will reset with every new session.
For example, if a user clicks your paid Facebook ad (Campaign A) today, and then comes back organically (Campaign B) tomorrow, the ‘First user campaign’ will remain Campaign A, but the ‘Session campaign’ for the second visit will be Campaign B.
For measuring the success and ROI of your acquisition campaigns, particularly paid social, the User scope provides the necessary long-term perspective.
However, relying solely on client-side GA4 tracking for paid social attribution is prone to data loss due to ad blockers, browser restrictions, and network issues.
An enterprise-grade solution involves integrating multiple APIs for a complete picture.
The combination of the Google Analytics Data API, Facebook Conversions API, LinkedIn Conversions API, Looker Studio API, GTM, and a server-side tagging environment like Stape or Google Cloud Platform creates a powerful data ecosystem.
The Facebook and LinkedIn Conversions APIs allow you to send high-quality, server-side conversion events directly to the ad platforms, which improves their campaign optimization and targeting, bypassing client-side tracking issues.
Concurrently, using a server-side container hosted on Stape or GCP allows you to process and clean all your traffic data, including first-party data enriched with details you control, before sending it to GA4 using the Measurement Protocol.
Finally, the Google Analytics Data API can be used to pull the highly accurate, server-side validated GA4 data, and the Looker Studio API can then ingest this data to create robust, custom dashboards that perfectly cross-reference the spend data from the ad platforms with the acquired user data from GA4, providing a single, truthful report on the lifetime value and ROI of your ‘First user campaign’ acquisitions.
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