The Manila Times, a leading news publisher in the Philippines, sought to improve its audience engagement and content analysis capabilities. With limited experience using Google Analytics 4 (GA4), the team was relying on default reports. As part of the Google News Initiative’s (GNI) GA4 Accelerator Program, they worked with GNI’s delivery partner Monks to transition to advanced GA4 tracking and reporting to gain deeper insights into their readers' behaviors, optimise their content strategy, and enhance their digital strategy.

The Manila Times team faced challenges in leveraging GA4 to its full potential. While they were familiar with basic reporting, the team struggled to tap into advanced tracking features that could provide richer insights into audience engagement and content performance. Without proper data segmentation, it was hard to make informed decisions about content creation and audience retention.

Working closely with Monks, The Manila Times was guided through the process of setting up advanced GA4 tracking. This began with a comprehensive review of best practices for GA4, DataLayer, and Google Tag Manager (GTM) setups. They were introduced to custom reporting focusing on implementing key events like article_complete in GTM and GA4.

Another step involved implementing custom events in GTM and GA4, allowing The Manila Times to track key actions, such as article completions, which had previously been difficult to track and capture. The Manila Times also enhanced their content engagement tracking, ensuring they could identify which articles resonated most with their readers.

By the end of the engagement, The Manila Times had successfully transitioned from using default GA4 reports to a comprehensive event-based tracking system. This allowed them to:

Segment audiences more effectively, creating four key audience groups (casual readers, loyal readers, brand readers, and email readers) to tailor content to different reader behaviors.

Track article completion rates and other content engagement metrics, providing deeper insights into how readers interacted with content and identify articles that were most engaging.

Make data-driven decisions to refine their content strategy, focusing on articles that garnered the most engagement, ultimately improving retention and audience satisfaction.

The Manila Times were also taught how to create custom dimensions like event parameters and building reports to analyse author performance and page engagement.

As a result, The Manila Times developed tailored reports for audience engagement and content analysis, enabling better data-driven decisions.

By the end of the engagement, The Manila Times’ GA4 tracking expanded significantly, including advanced event-based reporting with article completion, and scroll tracking.