The MacKellar Memo | August 2022

If you’re like me, you’re always finding yourself missing the things of your yesteryear. The US Men’s National Team jerseys from 1994 will always be better than the ones from 2022, Under the Table and Dreaming is always better from a cassette than Spotify, and the Hi-C at McDonald’s hit better when you were 12 than when you are 37. 

But you know what wasn’t better when we were youths? The internet. Sure, you could get free music (and about a zillion viruses) from Napster, but that freedom was outweighed by the fact that you had to wait hours upon hours for an album to download. 

We’ve come to love the new internet over time, and with it, the changes to our workday. Since we’re taking a trip down nostalgia lane this monthly, I thought it would be fun to look toward the future thanks to the BFF of marketers everywhere — Google. 

First up — Google Analytics 4 (or GA4), which debuted in 2019 (ahh, the pre-pandemic world…) to widespread attention but not adoption. Fast forward to 2022, and we’re in the final 12 months before GA4 is the only game in town, as it is set to officially replace Universal Analytics on June 30, 2023. 

Why bring this up now? Because, unlike my beloved soccer jerseys and DMB albums, there’s no reason to be nostalgic. Marketers everywhere can complain to their heart’s content about how bad GA 4 might be, but you know what — we’re all stuck with it, so we might as well figure it out.

The same can be said for Google’s Expanded Text Ads (ETAs), which we waived goodbye to just a few months ago. While we can longingly admire the ETAs still in accounts and even use them in active campaigns, they’re frozen in time as they’re no longer editable. That means we must embrace the “new” kid on the block, our default BFF the Responsive Search Ad. These are half science, half creativity and half jenga, but 100% our only option until the next new, cool ML-backed idea comes to life. 

So let’s find some balance between the two — toss on your high school letterman’s jacket, hit play on volume 1 of Now That’s What I Call Music! while you’re digging into GA4 and RSAs. It will be radical, dude!