What Google Customer Match Means for Marketers

70% of online consumers agree that the quality, timing, and relevance of a brand’s message influences their perception of a brand.1

Google executives announced two new intent-rich products this week at Advertising Week’s Times Center Stage that will seriously change customer engagement.

Customer Match

Working in tandem with Google Search, YouTube and Gmail, Customer Match is designed to help advertisers reach their highest-value customers.

Rolling out in the upcoming weeks, Customer Match will allow advertisers to highly segment campaigns by matching uploaded email lists to signed-in users. Additionally, marketers can reach new customers with the Similar Audience feature, which will match ads with users on YouTube or Gmail exhibiting similar interests to your brand, products or services.

This doesn't mean a full-frontal ad assault on consumers, however. Users will have complete control over the ads they see with the option to opt out of personalised ads, muting or blocking ads from individual advertisers through Google Ads Settings - including Google Customer Match.

So what will this mean for marketers?

Facebook has been using this model of hyper-relevant ads for a while now, but the adaptation to Google means a whole new - and much larger - ballgame for the marketing industry.

"The potential of sending specific display ads to specific customers will be a powerful tool in the marketer's arsenal."

"We expect the largest impact to affect B2B companies who target individual prospects," says Toby Kesterton, Lab Client Account Director. "The potential of sending specific display ads to specific customers will be a powerful tool in the marketer's arsenal. Overtime, as more automation is added, we will be merging CRM data into ad creatives for complete personalisation of retargeting ads."

Another bonus for marketers and brands - especially in the eCommerce market - is recovery from shopping cart abandonment or email opt-outs. An interesting conversation from E-consultancy's #Ecomchat pointed out that users who have purchased or abandoned on a significant date - like a holiday campaign roll-out - can still be targeted with PPC ads via Customer Match. This means that customers who may have broken up with you over Black Friday can be won over again with some clever wooing, i.e. Customer Match's hyper-targeted ads. We already know they like your brand, so what's the harm in reminding them while they browse your competitors or check their emails?

Universal App Campaigns

Google hasn't forgotten about you, app users - enter, Universal App Campaigns.

If you have gone through all of the trouble to create an app, why not apply the same marketing tactics to your app users?

Universal App Campaigns provides a scalable way to reach the customers that are most likely to install your app across a variety of channels.

Available to all developers and advertisers, the new product will connect advertisers with app users across Google Search, Google Play, YouTube, and the Google Display Network (GDN).

According to the announcement from Google, "All you need to do is give us your desired cost-per-install and we do the rest. Universal App Campaigns are the one-stop-shop campaign type that scales your reach and maximizes Android app installs across Google’s entire suite of ad platforms. We’ve automated campaign set-up by pulling in your app images, videos, and app description directly from your Google Play store listing to generate ad formats that look amazing wherever they’re placed. From there, our systems will optimize your campaigns using dynamic learning to maximize app install volume at your target cost-per-install. By testing different versions of your ad text and app images in each of the eligible Google networks, we determine the highest-performing variations so only your best ads show."

As marketers, we are obviously delighted with the announcement and can't wait to start putting Google's new products to task.

This is going to be big.