Google Analytics MAR Management
NOTE: We wrote this article before we changed our pricing model on February 1, 2022. If you signed up for a new Fivetran account or renewed your existing account after January 31, 2022, you have an unlimited number of free customer-triggered re-syncs per connector each month. For more information about MAR usage, see our pricing documentation.
Use Case
You want to understand how the functioning of Google Analytics connectors affects Monthly Active Rows (MAR).
Environment
Connector Overview
Google Analytics provides a lookback window of 30 days to track conversion-related data. To capture this data, along with syncing data for the last 2 days during every sync, we also sync 1 day's worth of data from both 7 days ago and 30 days ago once a day. As a result, we capture two months' worth of data per month. This means your Monthly Active Rows (MAR) are double the number of new rows added in your Google Analytics source. For example, if you add one thousand new rows to your source per month, the MAR usage for your Google Analytics connector is two thousand.
Contributing factors
There are six primary factors that contribute toward MAR:
- The number of accounts synced (the Sync All Accounts vs. Sync Specific Accounts setting)
- The number of profiles under each account selected
- Optional segments selected
- Optional filters used
- Historical Sync
- Aggregation (hour vs. day vs. month)
Managing MAR
The Historical Sync Time Frame (for example, 12 months or 3 months) will impact MAR during connector re-syncs. You cannot modify this setting once the connector is created.
Before setting up your Google Analytics connectors, we highly recommend that you test out your desired combinations of metrics and dimensions for compatibility as a best practice for report QA, testing, and preventative troubleshooting. You can use the Google Analytics Dimensions & Metrics explorer tool and the GA Query Explorer tool. These tools let you run sample queries that call the same Google Analytics reporting API that Fivetran connectors use.
You cannot change the aggregation (hour, day, or month) once the connector has been created. The more granular aggregation windows will increase MAR.
You can create multiple reports within a single Google Analytics connector, but the account (all or specific selected) is configured at the connector level, not at the individual report (table) level.