What Does Google Analytics 4 Mean for Concerts?

Moving from the familiar world of Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4 can feel like learning a whole new instrument, especially for the high-stakes, fast-paced world of promoting concerts and live events. The reports look different, the metrics are new, and the old way of doing things is gone. This guide cuts through the noise and explains precisely what GA4 means for you, how to track what really matters for your tour or festival, and how to use its powerful new features to sell more tickets.

Why GA4 is a Game-Changer for Concert Promoters

The single biggest shift in GA4 is its measurement model. Universal Analytics was built around sessions and pageviews - it was great at telling you how many people visited your website and how many pages they looked at. But for promoting a concert, you care more about actions than passive pageviews. Did they watch the promo video? Did they click the "Buy Tickets" button? Did they sign up for the presale list?

GA4 is built on an event-based model, which is a perfect fit for this. Now, almost everything a user does can be tracked as an event: page_view, video_start, add_to_cart, begin_checkout, and purchase are all just different types of events. This structure allows you to map out and measure the entire fan journey, from the moment they land on your site to the final ticket confirmation.

Think of it this way:

Old Way (UA): "We had 5,000 sessions yesterday, and our bounce rate was 60%." (What does that even mean for sales?)
New Way: "Our Facebook ad campaign drove 500 people who watched the promo video, 200 of whom clicked through to the ticketing page and then bought 75 tickets." (Now that's a useful insight.)

This event-driven approach lets you escape vague metrics and focus on the specific user actions that lead to a packed house on opening night.

Setting Up GA4 to Track What Really Matters

Out of the box, GA4 tracks several events automatically, like page views and scrolls. But the real power comes from setting up custom events that reflect your unique goals as a promoter or venue. These events are the signals that tell you which parts of your marketing are hitting the right notes.

Creating Custom Events for the Fan Journey

You can create custom events to track virtually any action on your website. Most of this setup is done through Google Tag Manager (GTM), a free tool that works alongside GA4. While diving into GTM is a topic for another day, here are the crucial custom events you should be planning to track for your next concert or festival:

presale_signup: Fired every time a fan submits their email to get presale ticket access. This is a high-value action that builds your email list with super-engaged fans.
tour_announcement_video_play: Triggers when someone plays the embedded tour video on your website. It helps you see how sticky your landing page content is.
tickets_clicked: Occurs when a user clicks any button that takes them to a third-party ticketing website like Ticketmaster, Eventbrite, or AXS. This is arguably your most important top-of-funnel conversion.
merch_viewed: If you're selling tour jackets or t-shirts, track when users click to view a product. It helps gauge interest and can open up retargeting opportunities.
share_to_social: Captures when a fan uses a social sharing button on your site to tell their friends about the show. This tracks your most passionate advocates.

By defining and tracking these specific actions, you transform GA4 from a passive traffic counter into an active business intelligence tool that measures fan engagement at every step.

Measuring the ROI of Your Marketing Campaigns

You're spending money on Facebook ads, running an email campaign, and paying influencers. But how do you know which efforts are actually selling tickets and which are just noise? GA4, combined with a simple tracking practice, gives you a clear answer.

1. Tagging Your URLs Like a Pro

If you're sending traffic to your website from anywhere - an email, a social post, an ad - you need to use UTM parameters. These are small snippets of text added to the end of your URL that tell Google Analytics exactly where the user came from.

A basic UTM-tagged URL looks like this:

https://yourbandsite.com/tour?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=summer_tour_2024

Here’s what each part means:

utm_source: The platform that is sending you traffic (e.g., facebook, google, tiktok, email_newsletter)
utm_medium: The type of marketing channel (e.g., cpc for paid ads, social for organic posts, email for newsletters)
utm_campaign: The name of your specific campaign (e.g., los_angeles_presale or album_release_promo)

Google has a free URL builder tool that makes this incredibly easy. Consistently using UTMs is non-negotiable for anyone serious about tracking marketing performance.

2. Reviewing Campaign Performance in GA4

Once your links are tagged, understanding campaign performance is straightforward. In GA4, just navigate to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition.

Here, GA4 will show you a table of all the sources and mediums driving traffic. You can see how many users and sessions each one generated. More importantly, you can add your custom events to this report to see which campaigns are delivering on your goals. You can see precisely which campaign drove the most tickets_clicked events or which influencer post resulted in the highest number of presale_signup conversions.

Beyond Clicks: Tracking Actual Ticket Purchases

Tracking the click to the ticketing website is great, but the ultimate goal is tracking the actual purchase. This has always been the single biggest analytics challenge for promoters because the transaction happens on a different website (e.g., Ticketmaster.com), a place where your GA4 tracking code doesn't exist. This is known as cross-domain measurement.

Luckily, there are solid workarounds for this.

Method 1: The 'Thank You' Page Redirect (The Simpler Way)

This is the most common and accessible method. The idea is simple: after a user successfully purchases a ticket on the third-party site, that site redirects them back to a dedicated "thank you" or confirmation page on your website (e.g., https://yourbandsite.com/order-confirmed).

The workflow looks like this:

Fan clicks a link with your UTM parameters (e.g., utm_source=facebook…)
They land on your website and GA4 starts tracking their session.
They click a tickets_clicked button and go to Ticketmaster.
They complete their purchase on Ticketmaster.
Ticketmaster redirects them back to yourbandsite.com/order-confirmed.

Because they’ve returned to your site, GA4 can reconnect this visit with their original session. All you have to do is set up a rule in GA4: anytime someone visits the /order-confirmed page, count that as a "purchase" conversion event.

Now, you can connect the dots all the way from ad spend to actual revenue, attributing ticket sales back to the exact Facebook ad, email blast, or Google search that started the journey. Most major ticketing platforms can accommodate this redirect setup.

Method 2: Server-to-Server Tracking (The Advanced Way)

For larger festivals or more technical marketing teams, there is an even more reliable option: server-to-server tracking. With this method, instead of relying on a user's browser to redirect, the ticketing platform's server sends purchase data directly to Google Analytics' servers via something called the Measurement Protocol.

This is the gold standard for accuracy as it doesn't depend on the user successfully being redirected. It requires developer resources to set up and an integration partnership with your ticketing provider, but it provides the cleanest possible data for large-scale campaigns.

Understanding Your Fanbase: Who's Buying Tickets?

GA4 provides powerful insights into the people actually engaging with your promotions. Navigate to Reports > User > User attributes > Demo details. Here you'll find demographic and geographic data about your website visitors.

You can cross-reference this data with your conversion events. For instance, you might discover that your new single is resonating strongest with a 25-34 year old demographic in cities you aren't currently touring. That’s an immediate, data-backed insight you can use to plan future tour dates or adjust your ad targeting for upcoming shows. You might notice a spike in traffic from a particular city's music blog, giving you a chance to reach out for a partnership.

This demographic data turns your audience from an abstract concept into a clear picture of who your fans are, where they are, and what they care about, helping you make smarter marketing decisions.

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, GA4’s event-based model is a perfect fit for the world of promoting concerts and festivals. By strategically setting up custom events and conversions, you can get a clear, step-by-step view of the fan journey, directly attribute ticket sales to your marketing spend, and make data-driven decisions that put more fans in seats.

We know that even with the best setup, digging through GA4's interface to manually build reports, connect data, and find insights still takes time away from your real job: promoting the show. That’s why we created Graphed. After connecting your Google Analytics account, you can simply ask questions in plain English, like "Show me a dashboard of ticket sales conversions this month from my Facebook campaigns" or "what city is driving the most presale signups?" and get a live, automated dashboard in seconds rather than hours. It automates away the reporting grunt work, so you have more time to focus on creating unforgettable live experiences.