So in this very important blog post, I’ll show you how to use Meme Reaction GIFs in Google Data Studio reports.

Before I start let me take the time to thank Data Studio guru Lee Hurst for his help with this. You can find him on Twitter or visit his website.

The Meme Reaction GIF Google Analytics Report

Without further ado, below is a dashboard with live Google Analytics data and a reaction based on how many page views the page has.

Step 1: Add in Google Analytics data using the Extract Data connector

So the way to be able to do this is to use the Extract Data connector.

So to keep things simple I’ve just extracted Date and Page View for the last 28 days from my Google Analytics data.

So the reason you have to use the Extract data connector is that it gives you the Page Views as a SUM metric as shown below.

If you use regular Google Analytics data then the Page Views metric will be Aggregated as shown below.

This is a small but important difference that allows the CASE statement that I’m about to discuss work.

Step 2: Using a CASE statement to match our Reaction GIFs to Page View numbers

So in order to match up our appropriate reaction GIFs with the right numbers, you need to create a CASE statement.

The the one I’m using is shown below. If a value is above a certain amount then it displays the appropriate image. In this case we’ve set 1000 and above as the best and less than 400 as the worst.

Here is the same CASE statement for you to copy and paste if you want to test it out. You’ll need to find your own GIFs or use these ones!

CASE 
WHEN Page Views >=1000 THEN "https://i.imgur.com/b6fyd3w.gif"
WHEN Page Views >=900 THEN "https://i.imgur.com/hd7rC6V.gif"
WHEN Page Views >=800 THEN "https://i.imgur.com/6zdseqS.gif"
WHEN Page Views >=700 THEN "https://i.imgur.com/4WeMI66.gif"
WHEN Page Views >=600 THEN "https://i.imgur.com/3ZPFFuh.gif"
WHEN Page Views >=500 THEN "https://i.imgur.com/t9bScLe.gif"
WHEN Page Views >=400 THEN "https://i.imgur.com/QQeZcZL.gif"
WHEN Page Views <400 THEN "https://i.imgur.com/NFEkXz5.gif"
ELSE "Other"
END

Step 3: Create an Image field to display the Reaction GIFs

So this is straightforward, we just create a new field using the IMAGE function that allows images to be displays in Data Studio report tables. Fortunately for us, this also works for GIFs.

You can read a more detailed guide about how to add images in this post.

Now we have our final Data Source that we use to build our Dashboard.

Step 4: Create a Table with Date, Reaction Gif and Page Views

So to create our main table, we need to add in Date and Reaction Image as our Dimensions, and then Page Views as our Metric.

And there you have it! I hope you enjoyed learning about how add Meme Reaction GIFs in Google Data Studio reports!

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