Generally speaking, Google Analytics (GA) capabilities for customer journey - analytics and - attribution are limited. GA is great for basic web analysis but not intended to serve as a customer journey analytics - or even attribution - tool.
1. GA doesn't allow understanding the impact of marketing touchpoints in the customer journeys
GA lacks data-driven and algorithmic attribution models. It solely works with static attribution models (e.g. last-click, time-decay, u-shaped, linear) which don't account for the non-converting journeys. Integrating the non-converting journeys and touchpoints is crucial for marketing attribution and an essential part of every data-driven attribution model.
Google Analytics Premium includes data-driven attribution models, but it's completely intransparent how the algorithm works. Therefore it's unclear, whether they integrate onsite-events, which is essential for causal attribution.
2. No attribution of display views in GA
For evaluating display ads advertisers should not only take into account the clicks on display banners, but also consider the display impressions. Adtriba enables advertisers to easily integrate display views into the marketing attribution. GA doesn't allow display view tracking and attribution for channels outside of Google.
3. Limited access to user-level customer journey data
GA doesn't give access to the user-level customer journeys, including the attribution weights attached to the marketing touchpoints. This is essential if you require 100% transparency. Also, if you want to further analyse the data in your BI systems or join the data with backend data for advanced analysis, you need access to the user-level customer journeys data.
4. Integration of cost data from other ad-platforms is difficult with GA
To get a consolidated view on your marketing performance it's essential to integrate costs from your marketing channels. Compared to Adtriba this is difficult to do in GA.
5. TV attribution isn't part of Google Analytics
With Google Analytics TV attribution and properly accessing the impact of TV ads isn't possible. Adtriba allows for user-journey level and cross-channel TV attribution. You can read more about in this blog-post.
6. Lack of CLV attribution in GA
CLV attribution is crucial for a longterm focused and sustainable marketing investment. Simply speaking, first campaigns touchpoints in a journey should not only be rewarded for the first, but also for the second and following conversions. You can read more about it here. GA's marketing performance evaluation is short-term focused and doesn't allow for CLV attribution.
7. Google marks it's own homework
Last but definitely not least, GA evaluation of the marketing performance is not unbiased and independent. It's a solution provided by the biggest ad platform which for most advertisers is also the largest marketing cost driver. There have been numerous cases, where ad platforms have reported incorrect performance metrics. Most sophisticated advertisers today don't want to rely on the numbers reported by the ad platforms themselves. That's why they choose independent 3rd party attribution tools such as Adtriba.