Overview
Your Google Analytics 4 (GA4) integration with MNTN may show unexpectedly low engaged sessions, conversions, or attributed revenue. Two common causes are:
Server-side tag implementations using FPID cookies
Google Ads Enhanced Conversions feature changing the User ID type
These issues create identity mismatches that GA4 cannot reconcile with MNTN-tracked sessions.
Diagnose Issues
GA4 Server-Side Tagging:
The MNTN x GA4 Integration does not currently support server-side GA4 placements. Server-side placements leverage a hashed identifier called an "FPID Cookie," which is passed to GA4 in lieu of the "GA Client ID."
This creates a mismatch between the GA Client ID present in the Session Start event passed by MNTN and the engagement and behavior data being collected by the server-side tag placement. Without alignment of the 2 identifiers being collected, GA4 will treat these client IDs as separate users, creating an identity reconciliation issue. Since the identifiers are unable to be reconciled between the 2 systems, attribution can never be given to the session start event that MNTN is passing.
Steps to Identify
Go to your website and open up the “inspect” window. From here, you will go into the “Application” subheader at the top, and find the “Cookies” drop-down on the left-hand sidebar. Click on the line item that shows your website domain. From there, use the search bar to type in “FPID”
If you see FPID populate, you are leveraging a server-side GTM placement
⚠️ Warning: If there is an FPID on site, but the Domain is listed as “mountain,” this does NOT indicate a server-side placement. The domain must match your site or your GTM container name.
Data Impact
If you are leveraging a server-side placement, you may see sessions in GA4, but the engaged session count will be extremely low. This will also impact all conversion and revenue attribution, leading to low or no MNTN attributed data.
Options for Resolution
If you are leveraging a server-side implementation, we recommend flagging this directly with the Platform Experience team so they can add your account to our FPID testing sequence.
MNTN only supports Client-Side placements, so you'll need to set up an additional client-side placement or revert your set-up to client-side.
Enhanced Conversions:
The integration is not currently supported when Google Ads's "Enhanced Conversions" feature is in use. This is because Google leverages an "Enhanced User ID" as the main identifier populated in their data collection. Because MNTN passes data directly to GA4 leveraging the User ID type of "GA Client ID, this feature will create an identify reconciliation problem. This feature effectively updates the User ID type across all data collection on the Google side, but MNTN cannot access this ID since it's assigned by Google post-collection.
Steps to Identify
You can check if you are using Enhanced Conversions by following these steps:
In Google Ads, Go to Goals, then Conversions, then Settings, and expand the Enhanced Conversions for the web panel.
If enhanced conversions are turned on, you'll see a "Turn on enhanced conversions for web" checkbox.
Data Impact
Sessions and Engaged sessions may populate as expected, but you will see low or no MNTN-attributed conversions and revenue in GA4.
Options for Resolution
The solution is to turn off Enhanced Conversions in Google Ads, which will revert the User Identify to the GA Client ID.
You can turn off enhanced conversions by following the instructions at the bottom of this Google Support article.
We do not have a path forward for testing solutions with Enhanced Conversions enabled since we do not have visibility into Google Ads to reconcile this, but you can reach out to the Customer Experience team to flag that you are using this feature for potential testing in the future.