How do I use Customer Match in Google Ads?

Customer Match takes contact details your customers shared with you, such as email addresses, phone numbers, or names with a country and zip code, and matches them to Google accounts. The people it matches become a customer list among your data segments, and when they’re signed in you can reach them, or leave them out, on Search, the Shopping tab, YouTube, Gmail and Display. Google says Customer Match shows ads to those customers “and other customers like them”.

What a customer list is for, by where you add it:

• As an exclusion, to keep your customers out of a campaign meant for new ones.
• Under Observation, which doesn’t narrow who sees your ads. On a Smart Bidding campaign Google uses a first-party segment added this way as a signal.
• Under Targeting, to show the ads only to people on the list: an offer for existing customers, say.
• In a Performance Max audience signal, to tell it who your customers are. Customer lists are among the first signals Google suggests.
• For the customer acquisition goal, which bids more for new customers than existing ones. Google asks you to define your existing customers with a customer list and your site’s tag.

You don’t have to add a list anywhere for bidding to use it. Google says campaigns using Smart Bidding and optimized targeting “automatically include all the Customer Match lists in your account”, unless you turn that off: open the Admin icon, then Account settings, and in the Customer Match section untick Use all Customer Match lists in Smart Bidding or Optimized Targeting. Campaigns on manual bidding don’t use them.

• Observation and exclusions: any account, or manager account, with a good history of policy compliance and a good payment history.
• Targeting and manual bid adjustments as well: an account with 90 days of Google Ads history and more than USD $50,000 of lifetime spend. Google converts spend in another currency at that currency’s average monthly rate.

The data has its own rules, from Google’s Customer Match policy:

• Upload only what you collected first-party: from your website, app or shop, or wherever customers gave it to you directly.
• Your privacy policy has to say you share customer data with third parties to perform services for you, and you need consent for that where the law or Google’s EU user consent policy requires it.
• Nobody under 13, and nothing collected from a site or app for children under 13.
• No list combined with other targeting, such as a small area, so that an ad reaches only a few people, and no ads in sensitive categories, such as pharmaceuticals.

Google may take Customer Match away from an account whose ads could harm people or give them a poor experience, judging by user feedback, how common or severe the abuse is, and repeated violations.

The file is a CSV, in ASCII or UTF-8, with its column headers in English: Email, Phone, First Name, Last Name, Country and Zip. Use any you have: matching by address needs all four of First Name, Last Name, Country and Zip. Put everything you know about one customer on one row, with more Email or Phone columns if they have several. Phone numbers take their country code, in the E.164 format, and a country its ISO code, such as US. A file needs at least 100 records.

Email,Phone,First Name,Last Name,Country,Zip
jordan.lee@example.com,+13125550143,,,,
,,maría,pérez,US,60614

1. 01Go to Tools › Shared library › Audience manager.
2. 02Under Your data segments, select the plus button, then Customer list, and name the segment.
3. 03Choose whether the file is plain text or hashed. From plain text, Google Ads hashes the email, phone and name columns on your computer with SHA256 before sending them, and leaves country and zip code as they are. To hash it yourself, lowercase and trim each value first, as Google’s formatting page sets out.
4. 04Choose the file, and tick the box confirming the data was collected and is shared in line with Google’s Customer Match policies.
5. 05Set a membership duration, at most 540 days, and select Upload and create list.

Matching can take up to 48 hours. The upload page then shows how many rows went in and the match rate: the share of the list Google could connect to its users. Google says most advertisers’ match rates fall between 29% and 62%, and that a rate reflects the file’s formatting, not how the list will do. Google deletes the file once it has matched it and checked it against its policies.

A file is one way in. The others keep the list current without anyone uploading it again:

• Data manager, under the Tools icon, connects a source such as BigQuery, Google Cloud Storage, Salesforce, Snowflake or an SFTP server to the list.
• A Customer Match upload partner sends updates without your Google Ads login, and Zapier can keep a list in step with your CRM or shop.
• The Data Manager API, which Google now recommends over the Google Ads API for a new integration.
• Conversion-based customer lists: with enhanced conversions set up through your tag, a tick in Account settings has Google build a list for each conversion goal and add each converter as they convert.

A list holds the customers of the day it was last uploaded. Anyone who has become a customer since isn’t on it, and Google drops people too: a membership lasts at most 540 days from when it was added or refreshed, and a list needs at least 100 members added or updated in those 540 days to stay eligible. To serve on Search, Display or YouTube, a list needs at least 100 of its people active there in the last 30 days, or 1,000 matched people for a list last uploaded before 1 February 2024.

What a stale list costs depends on where it’s used:

• Excluded, it leaves out only the customers you had then. Everyone who bought since sees ads meant for new customers, and you pay for their clicks. Even a fresh list can’t leave out someone who has turned off ads personalization.
• Targeted or observed, it reaches or reports on a shrinking share of your customers.
• For the customer acquisition goal, a recent customer missing from the list reads as new, and is bid for as one.

Google flags it for you. Its Recommendations page shows Refresh your Customer Match lists when a list your ads use for observation, targeting or exclusions hasn’t been updated for more than 90 days. Google’s own advice is an upload at the same time each week if you upload by hand, and a daily addition if you use the API.

To refresh one:

1. 01In Tools › Shared library › Audience manager, select the customer list.
2. 02In the Customer list panel, open the three-dot menu and select Edit.
3. 03Choose Add more customers to add your newest ones, or Replace existing list members with a new customer list to start again from a full export. Google suggests adding rather than replacing, unless you mean to, to keep the list’s size.
4. 04Choose the file, tick the policy box, set the membership duration and select Save.

A list you’ve stopped using and won’t refresh is better removed, with Remove List in the same menu, than left to lapse. If nothing uses it at all, the unused segments guide says what to check first.

A Performance Max asset group’s audience signal is optional, and Google says it helps its models find whom to optimize for. The first inputs Google names are your own: website visitor lists, app users, customer lists and video viewers. A signal is a place to start, not a limit: Performance Max may show ads to people outside it who are likely to convert.

1. 01In the Performance Max campaign, open the Audiences section under the asset group.
2. 02Select an audience you’ve built, or create one and give it a name.
3. 03Under Your data, add your customer list, and a website visitors list beside it if you have one.
4. 04Select Save Audience.

An audience can be shared: editing it changes it for every asset group and campaign that uses it. To change it for one asset group only, save the edit under a new name.

Every day Goldbeater reads every customer list in the account, every place an enabled campaign uses one, and Google’s recommendation to refresh one, and raises:

• A customer list gone stale: one the account owns that an enabled campaign or its ad group excludes, targets or observes, that an enabled Performance Max asset group has in its signal, or that a combined list in use holds, where Google’s recommendation says it hasn’t been updated in 90 days or more, or Google sizes it at 0 on both Search and Display. It’s medium where a campaign excludes it and low elsewhere, and shows each campaign using it with what that campaign spent in 30 days. It drafts no change, since the fix is an upload of your own file.
• A Performance Max asset group told nothing about your customers: one with no audience signal (medium), or whose signal holds only interests, custom segments, life events or demographics (low). It names the account’s largest customer list and visitor list of 1,000 people or more to add, and drafts no change, since other asset groups may share the audience.

The finding is the sample table’s first row, with what each campaign that uses the list spent. A customer list nothing uses is in the unused segments guide, and the audit checklist has every audience line with where to find it in Google Ads.

What is Customer Match in Google Ads?

A way to reach the customers you already have. You upload the contact details they gave you, Google matches them to signed-in Google accounts, and the matches become a customer list you can target, observe, exclude or give Performance Max as a signal, on Search, the Shopping tab, YouTube, Gmail and Display.

Why can’t I target my customer list?

Targeting needs 90 days of Google Ads history and more than USD $50,000 of lifetime spend. Below that, a policy-compliant account can still use the list under Observation and as an exclusion.

How big does a customer list need to be?

A file needs at least 100 records, and a list needs at least 100 of its people active on a network in the last 30 days to serve there. A list last uploaded before 1 February 2024 needs 1,000 matched people.

How long does a customer list take to be ready?

Up to 48 hours to match. The upload page then shows the rows uploaded and the match rate, which Google says is between 29% and 62% for most advertisers.

How often should I update a customer list?

Google suggests each week by hand, or each day by the API, and recommends a refresh when a list your ads use goes more than 90 days without one. A membership lapses 540 days after it was last added or refreshed.

Does Smart Bidding use my customer lists if I haven’t added them?

Yes. Campaigns using Smart Bidding and optimized targeting include every Customer Match list in the account unless you untick the setting under Admin, Account settings, Customer Match. Manual bidding doesn’t use them.