Google Ads Customer Match is Google’s platform for creating targeted advertising audiences based on your customer data. It allows businesses to upload customer lists and create custom audiences for retargeting campaigns, enabling more precise audience targeting and improved ad performance.

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1. Overview

Imagine you have customer data coming from other sources such as CRMs, sales and financials systems and others. You want to be able to feed Google Ads with these customers’ information, so ads are targeted to a very specific audience. Customer Match lets you use your online and offline data to reach and re-engage with your customers across Search, the Shopping tab, Gmail, YouTube, and Display. Using information that your customers have shared with you, Customer Match targets ads to those customers and other customers like them.

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2. Important considerations

The three primary match keys are email address, mailing address, and phone number. You can use user ID and mobile device ID as match keys, but these solutions are less future-proof given their reliance on cookies and device ID. We recommend uploading user contact information — such as email address, mailing address, and phone number when possible instead of CRM or mobile IDs. Google Ads only uses a Customer Match user list for targeting if it has met a minimum threshold of active users at the time the ad is served. Active users is the number of users on your list who are active on Gmail, Search, YouTube, or Display. Upload at least 5,000 members to increase the chance of having enough matched, active users for targeting.

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3. Configuring the destination

  1. For configuring this destination, go to the Destinations tab and click on the “Add destination” button located on the top right of your screen. Then, select the Google Ads - Customer Match List option from the list of connectors.
  2. Click Next and you’ll be prompted to add the connector configuration:
    • Authorization: you should authenticate this connector with a Google Account with enough permissions to access the Google Ads account to which you want to send the Customer Match List data.
    • Customer ID: the Google Ads customer ID from the account you want to extract data from. You can obtain this information from the top-right corner of your Google Ads account. For more info, please check this article.
    • List name: defines the list to which you want to upload your customer data. If a list with the specified name doesn’t exist on your Google Ads account, a new one will be created.
    • Membership lifespan: number of days a user stays on your list since its most recent addition. The maximum allowed lifespan is 540 days.
    • Ad user data consent: specify the consent of the uploaded users for sending user data to Google for advertising purposes.
    • Ad user personalization consent: specify the consent of the uploaded users for ad personalization.
    • Should hash PII information: indicates whether you want the connector to hash PII information like email, phone number, first name, last name and street address. If this is set to False, you need to provide the hashed data to the connector, as it’s a Google Ads requirements.
    • Upload key type: there are three types of list identifiers that can be used.
      • CONTACT_INFO: this allows you to upload customer information such as email addresses, mailing addresses and phone numbers. Note that contact information must be associated with a Google Account in order to be matched, and corporate accounts — such as Google Workspace — cannot be targeted.
      • CRM_ID: CRM IDs are matched from a user ID generated and assigned by the advertiser.
      • MOBILE_ADVERTISING_ID: you can perform customer matching using Identifier for Advertising (IDFA) or Google Advertising ID (AAID) mobile device IDs
      While customer lists can contain only one list identifier, multiple types of contact information can be uploaded for an upload_key_type of CONTACT_INFO. This is recommended for increased match rates. You should choose the upload key that aligns with the data fields you are sending.
Important: if you are uploading data for users in the European Economic Area (EEA), you need to ensure you are passing the required consent signals to Google on the Ad User Consent and Ad Personalization Consent fields.
  1. Click Next.

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4. Select your catalog data to send

  1. The next step is letting us know which data you want to send to the Google Ads - Customer Match List destination. Select the layer and then the desired table.
    Tip: The table can be found more easily by typing its name.
  2. Click Next.

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5. Map your data to the destination

In this step, you should map the fields from the input table to the destination. It’s important that your table contains the structured data needed to sync with Google Ads - Customer Match List. This is the list of fields available at the destination for each upload key type.

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CONTACT_INFO

Field nameDescription
first_nameThe first name of the user.
last_nameThe last name of the user.
emailThe email address of the user.
phoneThe phone number of the user. The connector automatically normalizes and format to E164.
country_codeThe country code of the user. It should match a country code provided by this list.
postal_codeThe postal code of the user.
The unique identifiers allowed by Google Ads are:
  • email
  • phone
  • A combination of first_name, last_name, country and postal_code
You should send at least one of the above options for each user in the list. The more you send, the higher are the chances of a successful match by Google.

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CRM_ID

Field nameDescriptionRequired
crm_idThe CRM identifier from the advertiser platform.Yes
first_nameThe first name of the user.No
last_nameThe last name of the user.No
emailThe email address of the user.No
phoneThe phone number of the user. The connector automatically normalizes and format to E164.No
country_codeThe country code of the user. It should match a country code provided by this list.No
postal_codeThe postal code of the user.No
Even though the user identifiers are not required when the upload key is CRM_ID, it’s a good practice to add them to increase the chances of matching.

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MOBILE_ADVERTISING_ID

Field nameDescriptionRequired
mobile_advertising_idThe mobile advertising ID of the user.Yes
In addition to that, for all upload types you can add specific consent information for each user in a separate field.
Field nameDescriptionRequired
ad_user_data_consentWhether the user has given consent for sending user data to Google for advertising purposes.No
ad_user_personalizationWhether the user has given consent for ad personalization.No
For both ad_user_data_consent and ad_user_personalization the accepted values are: UNSPECIFIED, UNKNOWN, GRANTED, DENIED.
Once the fields are configured, you can move forward by clicking the ‘Next’ button.

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6. Configure your Google Ads Customer Match List data destination

  1. Describe your destination for easy identification within your organization. You can inform things like what data it brings, to which team it belongs, etc.
  2. To define your Trigger,consider how frequently you need to have the data updated on the destination (every day, once a week, only at specific times, etc.).
  3. Click Done.

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Check your new destination!

  1. Once completed, you’ll receive confirmation that your new destination is set up!
  2. You can view your new destination on the Destinations page. Now, for you to be able to see it on Google Merchant Center, you have to wait for the pipeline to run. You can monitor it on the Destinations page to see its execution and completion. If needed, manually trigger the pipeline by clicking on the refresh icon. Once executed, your data should be seen on Google Merchant Center.
Important: once the destination runs successfully, it can take as little as 10 minutes or up to 24 hours for the upload job to complete. You should check the status directly on Google Ads portal what’s the status of the job.