Google lets companies advertise specifically after uploading email lists

Google is launching a new service called Customer Match. Customer Match allows advertisers to upload customer email addresses known to them into AdWords to target ads directly to their own customers.

Google then compares the email addresses directly with email addresses of logged in Google users. The individual e-mail addresses are hashed and thus anonymized according to Google. Advertisers can place bids on audience via AdWords, which is directly linked via the uploaded email lists. In this way it is also possible to use separate advertisements for the logged in Google or YouTube users.

Google already offered the so-called Retargeting Lists for Search Ads where ads based on Google searches are served to users. The lists via these retargeting lists are built via cookies and these can be removed by the user or are not allowed on the user’s systems at all through various plugins or extensions.

Through the new service announced Monday at Advertising Week, Google will leverage audiences using Google’s services across devices. The search and advertising giant explains it itself with the example of someone who searches for ‘non-stop flights to new york’ on google.com. If that person is signed in, they will see the same ads on their phone or tablet through search results, in Gmail, and through YouTube ads.

Customer Match offers the ads not only to a company’s existing customers, but also to ‘potentially interested customers’, for example people who perform a similar search. In addition to Customer Match, the company is also starting a new way of ‘discovering apps’ via Universal App Campaigns, which also links Google’s platforms.