Customer Match is now widely available and easier to use

Creating a first-party data strategy is more important than ever as the industry shifts towards a privacy-driven approach to marketing. Customer Match helps you use this first-party data to build strong relationships with your customers in a privacy-safe way. Today we’re announcing improvements to Customer Match that make it more accessible and easier to use.

Making Customer Match accessible to more advertisers

In June, we announced our plans to make Customer Match available to nearly all advertisers. Over the coming weeks, all policy compliant advertisers will be able to use Customer Match.

The features available to you depend on specific account requirements:

• All policy compliant accounts¹ can use Customer Match and similar audiences for Customer Match to observe performance and exclude audiences from your campaigns.
• If you have 90 days of policy compliant history in Google Ads and more than $50,000 lifetime spend², you can use Customer Match and similar audiences for Customer Match to observe performance, reach and engage with audiences, change the bids for your audiences, and exclude audiences from your campaigns.

Here are just a few examples of how you can use these Customer Match features in your own marketing strategy: 

• “Targeting” setting: Recommend other relevant products or services your customers may be interested in after they purchase from you.
• “Observation” setting: Provide a different experience for customers on your Customer Match lists that may be interested in something else you have to offer. Note that if you’re using Smart Bidding, your Customer Match lists added under the “Observation” setting will be used as signals for Smart Bidding strategies.
• Similar audiences: Reach new customers that share similar characteristics with people who’ve already bought from you.
• Manual bid adjustments: Bid higher for users that buy from you often.
• Exclusions: Exclude customers who have bought from you recently, but may be unlikely to repurchase soon.

For more information on how to use Customer Match and make the most out of your first-party data, check out this best practices guide.

Making it easier to upload Customer Match lists

In addition to making Customer Match more accessible, we’ve also been making it easier to use. For example, we heard feedback from many of you that you want more guidance when you run into issues uploading a Customer Match list.

Most of the time, these issues—like failed uploads and small list sizes—are due to incorrect formatting. To help you fix these errors before you manually upload, we’re introducing an upload preview tool in Google Ads. Now, you can see any formatting issues and apply the suggested fix directly in the interface.

Learn more about Customer Match in the Google Ads Help Center. 

Posted by Digvijay Singh, Product Manager, Google Ads

 

 

1. Advertisers/accounts must have a good history of policy compliance and good payment history.
2. For accounts managed in currencies other than USD, your spend amount will be converted to USD using the average monthly conversion rate for that currency.