On September 28, 2015, Google announced a significant new AdWords targeting feature: Customer Match. AdWords advertisers can now more precisely target their audience based on email addresses instead of the queries they put into the search box or the topics of the article they are reading. When a user gives out his email address because of online activities like subscribing to newsletters, signing up for an account, or making purchases, a company can upload this email and show ads to him whenever and wherever he is using Google Search, YouTube, or Gmail.
Customer Match vs Remarketing
Last month, I went on American Girl‘s website and clicked around because I was doing marketing research on this company. Although I was not interested in their products at all, I kept seeing those doll ads all over the Internet in the following weeks. I bet you all have a similar experience like mine. This is because of remarketing. Remarketing allows online advertisers to target people based on cookies, which record users’ activities on the browser.
While remarketing can narrow the audience to who has fired a tracking event (i.e. visiting a website), these people may come to the website with a various different intentions: they could be someone doing research on your company, they could be someone looking for a job opportunity, or they could also be your competitors.
Customer Match is here to help. A company can build a retargeting email list when their target audience trades their email addresses with a free whitepaper or a webinar. It is still not perfect, but it can assist marketers to craft a customized message to those who are highly engaged with your services.
How to Upload an Email List:
Customer Match is now available for every Google AdWords account. The process of setting up is quite simple, here’s the how-to:
à Sign in to your AdWords account
à Go to the Campaign tab
à Click Shared Library,
à Choose Audiences
à Click +Remarketing list
à Select Customer emails
Where Will I See These Ads?
The Customer Match ads now only show on three places: Google Search, YouTube (TrueView ads), and Gmail (Native ads). For example, let’s say that I was looking for a getaway vacation in Massachusetts and I subscribed to a newsletter from Expedia with my email: darren@gmail.com to get the first-hand information. Then I will have an opportunity to see ads from Expedia when I am searching for restaurant reviews, watching The Ellen Show on YouTube, or checking email.
With Customer Match, I might see ads about getaway promotions in Massachusetts even if I am currently traveling in Europe, and not searching for something or watching videos that are relevant to the theme of the ads.
Similar Audiences
Advertisers are excited about Customer Match not only because of the ability to stalk potential leads, but also because of the expansion to find similar audiences. In this way, an advertiser can double or triple his audience base, reaching out to people who share similar characteristics or interests with the people on the email lists.
For example, Expedia collects 500 email addresses from people who subscribe to their newsletters. Google identified that 95% of people in this list share the same interests: fitness, nutrition, and health. Under this circumstance, a person who is identified by Google that also has these three interests may see the ads which are crafted specifically to these subscribers, even though Expedia doesn’t get and upload his email address.
My Google-Identified Interests
Some people now might be concerned about their privacy. It’s somewhat creepy if one day a banner ad shows a product you’re interested in but you never knew and searched before. The good news is that you can opt out of personalized ads anytime you want, which I will explain in the next paragraph. And the bad news is that you will still keep seeing ads. It’s just that the ads you see will be more spammy, less relevant to your interests.
Users can control the ads they see by changing the setting through Google Ads Setting. Interestingly, this is where you can find out what Google “thinks” your interests might be. The data is derived from your search queries, videos watched on YouTube, etc. The image below is my interests identified by Google, which I think isn’t quite accurate…
Conclusion
I personally guess it might be some legal or privacy issues that delayed the launching of Customer Match. Otherwise it should not be a difficult technical problem for this search engine giant, Google, to apply this identity-based targeting option. The rollout of Customer Match intrigued many PPC marketers. And it is thrilling to see how it will influence the AdWords world.
Reference:
Create a customer emails list. (n.d.). Retrieved October 24, 2015.