Google Now Allows Advertisers To Upload Email Lists To Target Customers And Similar Audiences On Search, YouTube and Gmail

Google has made the announcement of its new product, called Customer Match, which provides advertisers with the ability to upload their customer and promotional email address lists into AdWords. The launch was rumored earlier this year in a report by the Wall Street Journal, but now that Google has revealed its plans, it has become clear that the new targeting capability extends beyond search to include both YouTube Trueview ads and the newly launched native ads in Gmail.

This marks Google’s first move to bring first-party data to search results, as well as to YouTube and Gmail. Customer Match signifies the first time that Google has allowed advertisers to target ads against customer-owned data in AdWords, with the search giant matching email addresses against those of signed-in users on Google. Advertisers will be able to set bids and create advertisements that are specifically targeted to audiences that are built from their email lists, with individual addresses being hashed and anonymized.

Marketers have already been able to serve ads to site visitors and customers with display ads by using retargeting lists captured in Google Analytics. Another product, Retargeting Lists for Search Ads (RLSA), allows users to bid on and serve ads tailored to audiences when they search on Google. However, retargeting lists are built with cookies, which users can choose to delete or block, and cookies are not effective on mobile. On the other hand, email addresses and user sign-ins are far more stable across various devices.

Customer Match also brings Google into line with products that have been available from both Facebook and Twitter for a long time, with Custom Audiences and Tailored Audiences, respectively. For Facebook, and perhaps Twitter as well, enabling CRM uploads has proven to be extremely successful. Certainly, many advertisers have been pushing for Google to join in, and now the search giant appears to have come to terms with any privacy considerations that are involved, perhaps due to witnessing Facebook’s growing revenue from its popular Custom Audiences ad product.

In addition to reaching existing segments, such as newsletter subscribers, recent buyers, or loyalty program participants, marketers will now be able to target new prospects with an expansion of Similar Audiences, which already exists for retargeting lists on the Google Display Network. The product builds lists of users based on browsing activity on websites in the Display Network, as well as contextual signals from users in the retargeting lists to find new users with shared interests and characteristics. Now, those lists can also be built based on the activity of CRM audiences. Similar Audiences for Customer Match lists can be targeted on YouTube and Gmail.

To begin using Customer Match, advertisers must upload their email lists to Audiences within AdWords, either manually or via the API, with no limit on the number of lists that a user can upload. Customer Match and Similar Audiences will both be made available globally over the next few weeks.