---
title: "How do I use Customer Match in Google Ads? · Goldbeater"
description: "What Customer Match does, who can use it, how to upload a customer list to Google Ads, and how to keep the list fresh enough to serve."
canonical: https://goldbeater.ai/guides/google-ads-customer-match
last-updated: 2026-10-04
---

Guide

# How do I use Customer Match in Google Ads?

What Customer Match does, who can use it, how to upload a customer list to Google Ads, and how to keep the list fresh enough to serve.

In short

- Customer Match turns the email addresses, phone numbers or names and addresses your customers gave you into a list of signed-in Google users, to reach or leave out on Search, the Shopping tab, YouTube, Gmail and Display, or to give Performance Max as a signal.
- If your account has a good record of policy compliance and payments, it can use a customer list for Observation and exclusions. Targeting and bid adjustments need 90 days of Google Ads history and more than $50,000 of lifetime spend.
- Upload a CSV in Audience manager, or connect a source in Data manager to keep the list current. Google Ads hashes the contact details with SHA256 on your computer before they're sent.
- A customer stays on a list for 540 days from their last upload, and Google recommends a refresh once a list your ads use goes 90 days without one.
- Goldbeater reads every customer list your account uses every day, and raises one Google hasn't had an upload for in 90 days or sizes at nothing, and a Performance Max asset group whose signal names none of your lists.

Get more from the same budget.

- Customer lists gone out of date
- Performance Max told nothing about your customers

Goldbeater finds these in your own account, says what each is worth and drafts the fix. 164 other checks find what else is wasting your budget and where it could earn more. Goldbeater's AI agent follows up every week.

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No card needed. Then $49 a month up to $5,000 of ad spend, or from $249 with a 7-day trial above that.

1. [01 Customer Match turns your customers into an audience Google can reach](https://goldbeater.ai/guides/google-ads-customer-match#what)
2. [02 Who can use Customer Match](https://goldbeater.ai/guides/google-ads-customer-match#who)
3. [03 How to upload a customer list to Google Ads](https://goldbeater.ai/guides/google-ads-customer-match#upload)
4. [04 A customer list goes stale unless you refresh it](https://goldbeater.ai/guides/google-ads-customer-match#fresh)
5. [05 A customer list as a Performance Max signal](https://goldbeater.ai/guides/google-ads-customer-match#signal)
6. [06 What it looks like when Goldbeater finds it](https://goldbeater.ai/guides/google-ads-customer-match#in-goldbeater)
7. [07 Questions](https://goldbeater.ai/guides/google-ads-customer-match#questions)

Contents

1. [01 Customer Match turns your customers into an audience Google can reach](https://goldbeater.ai/guides/google-ads-customer-match#what)
2. [02 Who can use Customer Match](https://goldbeater.ai/guides/google-ads-customer-match#who)
3. [03 How to upload a customer list to Google Ads](https://goldbeater.ai/guides/google-ads-customer-match#upload)
4. [04 A customer list goes stale unless you refresh it](https://goldbeater.ai/guides/google-ads-customer-match#fresh)
5. [05 A customer list as a Performance Max signal](https://goldbeater.ai/guides/google-ads-customer-match#signal)
6. [06 What it looks like when Goldbeater finds it](https://goldbeater.ai/guides/google-ads-customer-match#in-goldbeater)
7. [07 Questions](https://goldbeater.ai/guides/google-ads-customer-match#questions)

Get more from the same budget.

[Get a free first look](https://goldbeater.ai/app?start=look)

No card needed.

The manual way comes first, in Google Ads itself. Then the same problem as Goldbeater finds it, every day, without anyone asking.

## Customer Match turns your customers into an audience Google can reach

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”. Lists built from your site’s visitors are data segments too, and the [remarketing guide](https://goldbeater.ai/guides/google-ads-remarketing#lists) covers building 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. The [RLSA guide](https://goldbeater.ai/guides/google-ads-rlsa) covers a list observed in a Search campaign, and how to tell whether it pays.
- Under Targeting, to show the ads only to people on the list: an offer for existing customers, say. The [targeting guide](https://goldbeater.ai/guides/google-ads-targeting#audiences) covers which of the two settings a campaign belongs on.
- 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.

## Who can use Customer Match

- 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.

## How to upload a customer list to Google Ads

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.

A customer list file

Example

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

Invented customers. The second is matched by name, country and zip code.

1. Go to Tools › Shared library › Audience manager.
2. Under Your data segments, select the plus button, then Customer list, and name the segment.
3. Choose 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. Choose the file, and tick the box confirming the data was collected and is shared in line with Google’s Customer Match policies.
5. Set 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 customer list goes stale unless you refresh it

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.

Customer lists, read by hand

Sample data

| Customer list          | Size: Search | Size: Display | Used in                                                  | Refresh     |
| ---------------------- | ------------ | ------------- | -------------------------------------------------------- | ----------- |
| Past customers         | 3,100        | 5,400         | Excluded from 3 Search campaigns; Performance Max signal | Recommended |
| Newsletter subscribers | 8,800        | 14,000        | Observed on Brand — Exact                                | —           |

Three Search campaigns exclude Past customers, so everyone who bought since its last upload sees their ads, and Google recommends a refresh. Newsletter subscribers is up to date.

To refresh one:

1. In Tools › Shared library › Audience manager, select the customer list.
2. In the Customer list panel, open the three-dot menu and select Edit.
3. Choose 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. Choose 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](https://goldbeater.ai/guides/unused-audience-segments) says what to check first.

## A customer list as a Performance Max signal

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. The [Performance Max guide](https://goldbeater.ai/guides/performance-max-optimization) covers the campaign’s other signals, its reports and its limits.

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

## What it looks like when Goldbeater finds it

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.

Finding

Sample data

Medium Medium severity List size

"Past customers" hasn't been updated in 214 days, and 3 campaigns exclude it

Past customers

What Goldbeater saw

Google's recommendation to refresh it says it was last updated 214 days ago, so the 3 enabled campaigns excluding it show a customer who came after its last update ads meant for new ones.

- Days since it was updated

  214

- Cost of the campaigns using it, 30 days

  $7,224

|                                |                        |                                                          |        |
| ------------------------------ | ---------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------- | ------ |
| Sofas — Phrase                 | Excluded               | Campaign                                                 | $2,016 |
| Rugs — Broad                   | Excluded               | Campaign                                                 | $1,260 |
| Competitors                    | Excluded               | Campaign                                                 | $504   |
| Performance Max — All products | Performance Max signal | Asset group "Living room", audience "Existing customers" | $3,444 |

Its size

|                |       |       |
| -------------- | ----- | ----- |
| Past customers | 3,100 | 5,400 |

Why it matters

A customer list your campaigns exclude, target or use as a signal that Google says hasn't been updated in 90 days or more, or sizes at under the 100 people it needs to serve. An exclusion list gone stale lets every customer since its last upload see ads meant for new ones. Where the account already keeps a fresher customer list, the finding names it to put in its place.

What to do

Upload your current customer list to "Past customers" in Google Ads (Tools › Shared library › Audience manager), or connect the source that keeps it up to date, so it holds everyone who is a customer today. Google keeps a customer on a list for 540 days from their last upload. Until then, the campaigns that exclude it reach customers you meant to leave out.

What would change

The steps under What to do are the fix. Goldbeater drafts no change for this one.

This is “Customer lists gone out of date” on a sample account. See what it finds in your own account and what the fix is worth, and ask your AI analyst about any finding.

[Get a free first look](https://goldbeater.ai/app?start=look)

Sample data. Cedar & Pine Interiors is an invented account, and its figures are made up.

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](https://goldbeater.ai/guides/unused-audience-segments), and the [audit checklist](https://goldbeater.ai/guides/google-ads-audit-checklist) has every audience line with where to find it in Google Ads.

## Questions

- 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.

How Goldbeater checks this

## Get more from the same budget.

Goldbeater finds these in your own account every day. Each finding shows its evidence, an estimate of what it costs a month where it costs money, and, where a setting fixes it, a change drafted for you to approve.

A check is code that runs the same way every time, so a new finding means your account changed. Each week Goldbeater's AI agent follows up on what the checks find, and [your AI analyst](https://goldbeater.ai/ai-analyst) answers any question about your account.

Checks A finding is worth

- Customer lists gone out of date

  Fixing it raises the List size

- Performance Max told nothing about your customers

  Fixing it raises the Bidding signals

[Get a free first look](https://goldbeater.ai/app?start=look)

No card needed. [See every check](https://goldbeater.ai/checks).

Google's own pages

## Where the manual method comes from.

1. [About Customer Match](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6379332?hl=en)
2. [Your guide to Customer Match](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/10550383?hl=en)
3. [Customer Match policy (Advertising Policies Help)](https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/6299717?hl=en)
4. [Create a customer list](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6276125?hl=en)
5. [Create a Customer Match list by uploading a data file](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7659867?hl=en)
6. [Fix Customer Match issues with list upload, small list size, or low volume](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7474166?hl=en)
7. [Customer Match Best Practices](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/10010286?hl=en)
8. [Use a partner to create a Customer Match list](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7361372?hl=en)
9. [About Google Ads Data Manager](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/14639041?hl=en)
10. [How your data segments work](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2472738?hl=en)
11. [About “Targeting” and “Observation” settings](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7365594?hl=en)
12. [About Exclusions: Exclude specific audience segments from your targeting](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2549058?hl=en)
13. [About audience signals for Performance Max campaigns](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/14530785?hl=en)
14. [Types of recommendations](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/3416396?hl=en)
15. [About customer lifecycle goals](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/12080169?hl=en)

More guides

## Other things worth checking by hand.

- [How do I audit a Google Ads account? Work through 166 checks, area by area, conversions first.](https://goldbeater.ai/guides/google-ads-audit-checklist)
- [How do remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA) work in Google Ads? Add your visitor lists to Search, and check they pay.](https://goldbeater.ai/guides/google-ads-rlsa)
- [How do I set up Google Ads remarketing (retargeting) and its tag? Tag the site, build lists, and check each one pays.](https://goldbeater.ai/guides/google-ads-remarketing)
- [Why is my Google Ads bid strategy stuck in learning? See what reset learning, and let it settle.](https://goldbeater.ai/guides/bid-strategy-learning)

[All 75 guides](https://goldbeater.ai/guides)

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