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Customer Match

Customer Match is a Google Ads feature that matches a store's own customer data, such as emails and phone numbers, to Google accounts to build an ad audience.

How it works

The store uploads its customers’ email addresses, phone numbers, or names with country and postcode. Google Ads hashes any unhashed data with SHA256 and adds each record that matches a Google account to a customer list within 48 hours. A file needs at least 100 records.

The list works on Search, the Shopping tab, Gmail, YouTube and Display. Any policy-compliant account can use it for observation and exclusions; targeting and manual bid adjustments need 90 days of history and over USD 50,000 of lifetime spend. In Performance Max a list can be an audience signal, and the customer retention goal requires one.

Memberships last up to 540 days; a list with fewer than 100 members added or updated in that time stops being eligible. For a store with a few thousand buyers, see Customer Match for online stores.

Where you see it

Google Ads: Tools → Shared library → Audience manager → Your data segments, type “Customer list”. Data sources: Tools → Data manager. For new Customer Match integrations, Google recommends Data Manager or the Data Manager API rather than the Google Ads API.

Example

Example store, not client data.

The tableware shop uploads 2,300 customer email addresses from the last 12 months. Google Ads shows a rounded list size, usually smaller: it counts only customers with a matching Google account. If the shop never uploads again, every membership expires after 540 days and the list stops being eligible.

Not to be confused with

  • Enhanced conversions — also sends hashed customer data, but to measure a conversion more accurately, not to build an audience.
  • Remarketing — advertising to people who already know the store. Its site visitor lists come from the Google tag; a customer list holds what the store uploads, offline buyers included.

Right and wrong readings

  • Wrong: “We uploaded 2,300 customers, so 2,300 people will see our ads.” Right: only matched records enter the list, and ads reach only members active on Google’s services at the time.

Sources