Refreshing Marketing Analytics Education with Google Analytics 4 (GA4): Authentic Intra-Institutional Learning

Google Analytics skills are sought after in entry-level marketing analytics job postings, yet the platform remains largely absent from the marketing education literature. The transition from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) widens this gap between curriculum and practice. This paper addresses this gap through the Marketing Analytics Integration Blueprint (MAIB), a transferable curriculum design grounded in Experiential Learning Theory and Problem-Based Learning. The Blueprint stages student progression from Google’s curated GA4 Demo Account, which supports lower-order cognitive tasks, to live institutional data, which supports higher-order analytical reasoning. A key contribution of the paper is the formalization of authentic intra-institutional learning within marketing education, which positions the institution as the live client through collaboration between academic and professional staff, thereby mitigating some of the constraints associated with external authentic learning arrangements. The Online Supplementary Material provides ready-to-use GA4 teaching resources. Local implementation is described through module-level observations, interpreted as indicators rather than evidence of impact, and the challenges educators may encounter are identified and discussed. Marketing educators may adapt the MAIB beyond GA4 to emerging marketing technologies.