Search giant Google recently announced the global rollout of Customer Match, enabling AdWords advertisers to upload lists of email addresses to Google, which can then be matched to signed-in users. Customer Match is available for Google Search, YouTube and Gmail. Signed-in users visiting those websites can be served with targeted messages based on advertisers' own data.
Customer Match represents the biggest change to Google AdWords in a decade," noted Michael Carney, Managing Director of the online training provider Netmarketing Courses, and it's a new offering that can dramatically improve the effectiveness of AdWords efforts."
Now," added Carney, organizations can finally use whatever they already know about their customers such as when customers last shopped, how often they shop and how much they spend to really target messages through AdWords. Customer Match is a service that advertisers have been begging Google to offer for years, ever since Facebook introduced Custom Audiences so successfully. Facebook's email-matching capability has been a massive hit with advertisers and same success is expected with Google AdWords Customer Match."
Carney has prepared [a Special Report on the new Google Adwords Customer Match offering.](http://customermatch.net/special-report/)
As the Special Report notes, Customer Match goes a long way towards solving one of the biggest challenges facing marketers today: how to track consumers across devices. As more and more people use smartphones, tablets and desktop machines interchangeably, the problem is only going to get worse.
Facebook coined the phrase people-based marketing" to describe the new capabilities made possible by email-matching. Google's Customer Match simply extends the concept across search, email and video.
There are a number of reasons why Customer Match is so significant. Here are a few of them:
1. Customer Match will enable businesses to reach out to their existing customers more effectively (and more regularly), without drowning them in spam or sending them irrelevant messages.
2. Customer Match enables organizations to capitalize on what they already know about their existing customers, and provide relevant marketing messages based on that knowledge. Businesses no longer need to treat everyone the same way, but instead can communicate differently depending on the characteristics of those customers.
3. Customer Match solves one of today's biggest digital marketing problems, that cookies don't travel across devices and don't work on mobile. Email addresses can be used identify the same user uniquely.
4. Messages delivered via Customer Match targeting can be highly relevant because they're linked to specific keywords and not merely served up to browsers regardless of whether they're in buying mode or not.
5. Customer Match is available across three massively popular platforms: Google Search, Gmail and YouTube.
6. Google Search and YouTube can reach audiences at the very moment when they are showing purchase intent. Customer Match allows organizations to target their existing customers when they're in buying mode.
7. First-Party Data (i.e. information from organizations' own databases) is becoming more and more important for marketers. As noted in a recent eConsultancy survey, 82% of marketers indicated that they would be increasing their use of first-party data over the next twelve months. Thanks to Facebook, Twitter and now Google, it's becoming easier and easier for marketers to capitalize on their existing databases.
For more information on Google's new Customer Match product, and why it matters so much to businesses, please visit: http://customermatch.net/special-report/
