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This issue may be due to the difference in the way GA4 and Universal Analytics (UA) qualify and classify traffic sources. GA4 is known to classify some traffic as direct that UA would have otherwise attributed to a different source. This could explain why there’s an increase in direct traffic, but a decrease in Google ads traffic. It’s likely not an error with your Google Tag Manager configuration, but a result of the changes in attribution models between GA4 and UA. To get a more precise understanding, you might want to check the ‘Source’ and the ‘Medium’ parameters under the ‘Traffic acquisition’ report in GA4, compare it with UA, and see if there’s significant discrepancies. If you still find it complicated, consider consulting with a digital analytics expert to better interpret these changes.
