Digital marketing course (GA4, GTM)

1st party cookies are used to streamline the user experience on the site. These files are created by the site that the user has just visited. First party cookies are not further processed and are referred to as essential cookies. 
 Examples of first party cookies are login data, the contents of the shopping cart, or the jayke variation settings of a page.

3rd party cookies
Third party cookies are created by parties other than the owners of the site on which the user is located. Most often these are tracking cookies created by advertising companies.
 They are referred to as nonessential cookies. They are used to track the user across the web, retargeting and displaying advertisements.

The top-level container in GA4 where you store your data and manage properties. For example, you might create one GA4 account for your company website and a separate account for a personal blog. Visual: The account name appears at the top-left of the GA4 Admin screen.

Refers to how users arrive at your site or app (e.g. via organic search, ads, or social). GA4’s Acquisition reports show user source and medium (like google/cpc for paid Google ads). Visual: In the GA4 interface, check Reports > Life cycle > Acquisition to see acquisition metrics.

The primary user metric in GA4, counting unique users who have an engaged session or are new in the selected period. In other words, anyone who actively used your site or app (at least 10 seconds or triggered a key event) is an active user. Example: If Alice visited and stayed on your page for 15 seconds, she’s counted as an active user. Visual: Active Users appears as a scorecard on the GA4 Home page and reports.

An option in GA4 to enable Google’s advertising cookies and identifiers so you can collect demographics (age, gender) and build audience lists. It relies on Google Signals and third-party cookies. Note: You turn this on under Admin > Data Settings > Data Collection.

Short notes you add directly onto GA4 reports to mark important events (like campaigns or site changes). Annotations help explain spikes or drops in data by providing context. Visual: In GA4, annotations show up as small “note” icons on timeline charts when enabled.

How GA4 assigns credit for conversions to different marketing channels (e.g. which ads or sources lead to a sale). GA4 uses a data-driven attribution model by default, but you can compare different models. Example: If a user sees an ad (for Google), then later searches and converts (organic Google), attribution determines which channel gets the credit for that conversion. Visual: Attribution information is found under Reports > Advertising > Model Comparison.

A group of users defined by specific conditions (e.g. “users who added to cart”). You create audiences to segment and analyze subsets of traffic or to retarget in Google Ads. Example: An audience could be “all users who viewed a product page in the last 30 days.” Visual: Audiences are built under Admin > Audiences and can be applied in reports and explorations.

The average length of time (per user) that people actively engage with your site or app. It is calculated by dividing the total engaged time by the number of users. Example: If 10 users each spend 30 seconds actively on the site, the average engagement time is 30 seconds. Visual: You can see this metric in GA4 reports like Engagement Overview.