What is Display in Google Analytics 4?

Ever opened your Google Analytics 4 reports and seen "Display" listed as a traffic source? If you've been focused on SEO or paid search, this channel might seem a bit mysterious. This article will clarify exactly what "Display" traffic is, how GA4 identifies it, and how you can analyze it to get a clearer picture of your marketing performance.

Graphed

Still Building Reports Manually?

Watch how growth teams are getting answers in seconds — not days.

Watch the Demo

So, What Exactly is "Display" in GA4?

In Google Analytics 4, Display refers to traffic that comes from users clicking on your display advertisements. These are the visual, image-based, or video-based ads you see across the web - not the text-based ads that appear on a Google search results page. Think of them as the digital equivalent of billboards or magazine ads.

The primary source for this traffic is the Google Display Network (GDN), a vast network of over two million websites, videos, and apps where your ads can appear. When someone sees one of your banner ads on a blog or watches your pre-roll video ad on YouTube and clicks through to your site, GA4 will typically categorize that visit as coming from the "Display" channel.

It's important to distinguish this from other common channels:

• Paid Search: This is traffic from ads on search engine results pages (like Google Search). Users are actively searching for a keyword when they see and click your ad.
• Organic Search: This is unpaid traffic from search engines. Users find you through standard, non-ad search results.
• Referral: This is traffic from users clicking a direct, untagged link from another website.

In short, if Paid Search is like catching people who are asking for directions, Display is like putting up a billboard on a busy highway to catch their attention as they drive by.

How Google Analytics Identifies Display Traffic

Google Analytics isn't psychic, it relies on specific signals sent along with each click to categorize traffic correctly. This happens in two main ways: through auto-tagging with Google Ads and manual tagging with UTM parameters.

Graphed

Still Building Reports Manually?

Watch how growth teams are getting answers in seconds — not days.

Watch the Demo

The Power of Auto-Tagging and Manual UTMs

When you link your Google Ads account to your GA4 property and enable auto-tagging, Google handles everything automatically. Every time someone clicks one of your Google Display Network ads, a unique identifier called a "GCLID" (Google Click Identifier) is added to the URL. When the user lands on your site, the GA4 tag recognizes this GCLID and instantly knows the visit came from a specific Google Ads campaign, ad group, and ad. It automatically classifies traffic from the GDN as "Display."

But what if you're running display ad campaigns on other networks, like Criteo, Taboola, or AdRoll? That's where manual tagging with UTM parameters becomes essential.

UTM parameters are short bits of text you add to the end of a URL to tell analytics tools exactly where that traffic came from. GA4 looks at these tags, specifically the utm_medium, to categorize the traffic. To get your traffic into the "Display" channel grouping, your link's medium tag should be one of the following:

• display
• cpm (Cost Per Mille, or Cost Per Thousand Impressions)
• banner

Here’s an example of a properly tagged URL for a fictional summer sale campaign running on a third-party ad network:

https://www.yourstore.com/summer-sale?utm_source=adnetworkx&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=summer_sale_2024

Because utm_medium=display is present, GA4 will correctly file this traffic under the "Display" channel.

A Quick Tip: If you don't use proper UTM tagging for your non-Google display ads, that valuable traffic is likely to be miscategorized. Most often, it will end up lumped into the "Referral" channel, making it impossible to isolate ad performance from other referral links accurately.

Graphed

Still Building Reports Manually?

Watch how growth teams are getting answers in seconds — not days.

Watch the Demo

Finding and Analyzing Your Display Traffic in GA4

Now that you know what Display traffic is, let's find it in your reports. The most straightforward place to start is the Traffic Acquisition report.

Step-by-Step Guide to the Traffic Acquisition Report

1. Navigate to Reports in the left-hand menu.
2. Under the "Lifecycle" section, click on Acquisition, and then select Traffic acquisition.
3. By default, this report is grouped by "Session default channel group." Simply scroll down the list of channels and you should see a row for "Display," showing you key metrics like Users, Sessions, Engaged sessions, and Conversions.

Digging Deeper for Insights

Seeing the aggregated "Display" row is a good start, but the real value comes from going a level deeper. How do you know which campaigns or ad sources are driving this traffic?

From the Traffic Acquisition report:

• See the Source/Medium: Just above the chart, find the primary dimension dropdown that says "Session default channel group." Click it and change it to "Session source / medium." This view will explicitly show you traffic from sources like "google / cpc" (for traffic from the Google Display Network auto-tagging) or "adnetworkx / display" from our manual UTM example.
• Analyze by Campaign: To check the performance of specific campaigns, change that same primary dimension to "Session campaign." Now you can compare your "Summer Sale 2024" against your "Q4 Product Launch" display campaigns apples-to-apples.
• Add a Secondary Dimension: Want more context? Click the small blue "+" icon next to the primary dimension dropdown to add a secondary dimension. For example, using "Device category" as a secondary dimension can show you whether your display ads perform better on mobile or desktop. Using "Landing page + query string" can show you which specific ad destinations are most effective.

Why Display Traffic Matters (And How to Interpret It)

Analyzing display traffic requires a different mindset than analyzing search traffic. People who click display ads are often not actively looking for your product at that moment, your ad interrupted their browsing to capture their interest. Because of this, the metrics often tell a different story.

Here’s what you should focus on when evaluating your performance:

Top-of-Funnel Brand Awareness

Display ads are phenomenal tools for building brand awareness. The goal is often just to get your name, logo, and core message in front of a relevant audience. Don't be surprised if your Display channel has:

• A high number of Users and New users but a lower-than-average conversion rate. This is normal! You are reaching new people who may not be ready to buy yet.
• A lower Engagement Rate compared to channels like Organic Search or Email. A user clicking a banner ad out of curiosity is less invested than someone who actively searched for a solution you provide.

Audience Building and Retargeting

Display is also a powerhouse for retargeting - showing ads to people who have already visited your website. When you analyze your retargeting display campaigns, you should expect to see higher engagement and conversion rates, since this audience is already familiar with your brand.

Key Metrics to Look At

• Users and Sessions: Is your campaign reaching as many people as you hoped? Are they returning?
• Engaged sessions: Even if they don't convert, are users sticking around for a few seconds or visiting more than one page? This can indicate the quality and relevance of your ads.
• Conversions: In GA4, any important user action can be a conversion - not just a purchase. For a display awareness campaign, a conversion might be a newsletter signup or a video view. Track the conversions that align with the campaign's specific goal.
• Total revenue: For e-commerce businesses, even a small amount of attributable revenue from top-of-funnel display ads can justify the spend, as those initial touchpoints often contribute to later purchases.

Graphed

Still Building Reports Manually?

Watch how growth teams are getting answers in seconds — not days.

Watch the Demo

Got Problems? Common Troubleshooting Tips

If your GA4 data doesn't look quite right, consider these common issues:

My Display traffic is missing or looks too low.

This is almost always a tagging issue. If you are running display ads on non-Google networks and haven't added utm_medium=display (or banner/cpm), your traffic is being misclassified, likely as "Referral." Review the links in your active campaigns and ensure they are properly tagged.

My custom campaigns show up as "(not set)" or "(other)".

This can happen if you use a utm_medium that GA4's default channel groups don't recognize. To keep your reports clean, standardize your team's UTM creation processes. Always use simple, established mediums like display, cpc, email, and social to ensure GA4 knows where to put your traffic.

Final Thoughts

Understanding the "Display" channel in Google Analytics 4 is all about context. It represents traffic from your visual, top-of-funnel advertisements and is key to measuring brand awareness and retargeting efforts. By ensuring your campaigns are tagged correctly and you know where to look in the reports, you can get a full view of how your visual ads contribute to your growth.

We know that digging through different reports in GA4 and trying to connect the dots between your campaign-level data and actual site behavior can be time-consuming. That's why we built Graphed. We make it easy to merge your Google Analytics data with your ad platforms like Google Ads and Facebook Ads. Instead of manually building reports, you can simply ask questions in plain English, like, "Compare my CPA and conversion rate for Display versus Paid Search last quarter." We create instant, real-time dashboards that pull all your data together, giving you the answers you need in seconds, not hours.