The new customer acquisition goal enables you to efficiently acquire new customers through your Google Ads campaigns. You have the option to either optimize the campaign to bid higher for new customers or optimize the campaign to exclusively bid for new customers only.
The new customer acquisition goal is currently available for Performance Max and Search campaigns.
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Here are the primary marketing goals around customer acquisition:
- Grow overall revenue but optimize for conversions from new customers because new customers bring long term revenue to the business.
- Grow market share with a dedicated budget for customer acquisition either maximizing the number of new customer conversions with a Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) or maximizing the revenue from new customers to also meet near term return of investment (ROI).
New customer acquisition offers 2 modes to support these goals:
- Bid higher for new customers than for existing customers (New Customer Value mode): Add additional new customer acquisition value for a customer’s first purchase conversion value. This is the recommended mode because this lets you maximize revenue across all customers but also drive more new customers to your business within a single campaign.
- Only bid for new customers (New Customer Only mode): Limit ads to only customers who are new to your business (as determined based on historical purchases and existing customer lists you have uploaded in Google Ads). We recommend this option only if you have dedicated acquisition focused budgets or if you are running a non-purchase conversion focused campaign, for example: lead-gen.
Benefits
- Performance
- Higher share of new customer conversions, thus growing your business and driving longer term revenue
- Efficient budget utilization for new customer acquisition leading to lower acquisition costs
- Easy to set up and use
- Reporting on new vs. returning customer conversions
This article will guide you through the process of setting up the new customer acquisition goal in Performance Max and Search campaigns. It also includes links to topics that can help you learn more about how to optimize your new customer acquisition campaign in Performance Max and Search campaigns. Learn more About Performance Max campaigns.
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Instructions
Here are the steps to activate new customer acquisition in Google Ads for advertisers with online sales (feed and non-feed), lead generation objectives, and store goals. There are 4 main steps:
- Provide existing customer lists through Customer Match (highly recommended).
- Configure new customer acquisition goal within Conversions Summary in the account that owns the conversion action. This could be an individual Google ads client account or a manager account.
- Activate new customer acquisition in your campaign.
- View Reporting.
For advertisers with Online Sales objective (Google Merchant Center (GMC) feed and non-GMC feed)
1. Upload existing customer lists through Customer Match (optional, but highly recommended)
You can upload your customer lists so that Google can accurately designate new customers with up-to-date information that has been audited by you. Learn more about how to create and upload existing customer list.
2. Configure your new customer acquisition goal
- Having a "Purchase" conversion action is required to be able to optimize campaigns to acquire new customers. You can set up a new "Purchase" conversion action, or if you’ve already set up your conversion action, ensure you set the goal type to “Purchase” with Website as conversion source, and conversion action set to Primary.
- If you haven’t configured your new customer acquisition goal yet, use the following steps to set it up:
- In your Google Ads account, click the Goals icon
.
- Click the Conversions drop down in the section menu.
- Click Summary.
- Click Set Up in the “Customer acquisition” panel within the "Conversion Summary" page.
- Define existing customers by choosing one or more audience lists.
- Set the value assigned to customer acquisition. This is used only in the New customer value mode. This is added to a new customer’s first purchase conversion which will reflect in the reporting but also would help Smart Bidding to optimize towards new customers. The higher this value is, the more the campaign will be optimized towards new customers. This value will be used by default in all campaigns that optimize to new customer acquisition.
- You might want to set the customer acquisition value to be equal to the expected future organic revenue of a new customer.
Example: If customers spend an average of $120 USD per purchase, and 2 out of 3 customers buy annually for 2 years, the recommended new customer value would be $120 USD * ⅔ * 2= $160 USD.
- You can use the recommended value that’s suggested when you select the new customer goal, if you’re unsure what your new customer acquisition value should be. This recommended value is based on your average order value across your prior campaigns.
- You might want to set the customer acquisition value to be equal to the expected future organic revenue of a new customer.
3. Enable new customer acquisition in your Google Ads campaign’s settings
- In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon
- Click the Campaigns drop down in the section menu.
- Click Campaigns.
- Go to the Google Ads campaign you want to enable new customer conversions for (currently available for Performance Max and Search campaigns).
- Click on the settings icon
.
- Expand the “Customer acquisition” row.
- Select Optimize campaign for acquiring new customers.
- Choose whether you want to:
- Bid higher for new customers than existing customers (which is the recommended mode)
- This options lets you optimize for new customer acquisition, while helping you drive overall sales by targeting all customers
- Only bid for new customers
- This option limits your ads to only new customers, regardless of your bid strategy
- Bid higher for new customers than existing customers (which is the recommended mode)
- Choose whether you want to:
- This will pull values from your customer acquisition goal at the account level. If you need to make adjustments to that, click Change value and you will be taken to your account customer acquisition goal settings.
4. Monitor your campaign performance with respect to new customer acquisition
You can monitor the number of new customers you are driving with the new customer acquisition goal activated, and calculate key metrics such as customer acquisition cost (number of new customers/cost).
Where to view performance reporting
- In the “Campaigns table”, add the following columns to review the count of new customers and the total value adjustment of new customer acquisition, respectively:
- New Customers: The number of new customers you have acquired from the campaign.
- New Customer Lifetime value: The conversion value adjustment corresponding to acquisition conversions (first purchase conversions determined to be from new customers).
- In the “Campaigns table”, you can segment by "Conversions" or "New vs. returning customers". This segments your conversions and conversion value into 3 customer categories:
- New: People who purchased something online from your website or app for the first time. New customers are identified when they fulfill one or more of the following:
- They haven't made a purchase within the last 540 days (this applies when using Google autodetection system).
- They're not included in the existing customer list you specified in account level customer acquisition settings.
- They've been identified as new customers using the new customer reporting tag.
- Returning: People who purchased something online from your website or app previously. Returning customers are identified when they fulfill one or more of the following:
- They've made a purchase within the last 540 days (this applies when using Google autodetection system).
- They're included in the existing customer list you specified in account level conversion settings.
- They've been identified as existing customers using the new customer reporting tag.
- Unknown: Customers who we can’t report on due to policies around legally or culturally sensitive categories or conversions we cannot identify to be new or existing due to personalization settings
Note: If you use new customer acquisition with the Google tag, Google Tag Manager, or Firebase, we use the values provided in the tag for “new”, “returning”, or “unknown" customers instead of Google autodetection.
- New: People who purchased something online from your website or app for the first time. New customers are identified when they fulfill one or more of the following:
For advertisers with lead-generating objectives
1. Upload existing customer lists through Customer Match (highly recommended)
You can upload your audience list so that Google can designate new customers with up-to-date information that has been audited by you. Follow the steps below to upload and select your audience list:
- Create and upload your customer list following instructions on creating a customer list.
- Select your uploaded customer list by following the customer match steps.
2. Define existing customers in your Google Ads account
- If you don’t have a new customer acquisition goal yet, set one up:
- In your Google Ads account, click the Goals icon
- Click the Conversions drop down in the section menu.
- Click Summary.
- Scroll to the bottom of the page and expand the “Custom goals” section, click Set up on the Customer acquisition row.
- In your Google Ads account, click the Goals icon
- Define existing customers by choosing an audience list. It is strongly recommended that audience lists including Customer Match are used for our new customer detection to be as accurate as possible. If you use a manager (MCC) account, ensure automatic sharing is on.
- Set the value assigned to customer acquisition.
3. Enable new customer acquisition in your Google Ads campaign’s settings
- In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon
- Click the Campaigns drop down in the section menu.
- Click Campaigns.
- Go to the Google Ads campaign you want to enable new customer conversions for.
- Go to the settings icon
- Expand the “Customer acquisition” row.
- Select Optimize campaign for acquiring new customers.
- Select Only bid for new customers.
4. View reporting for your tracked conversion goals
You can view your conversions and conversion values after a user interacts with your ad and takes the next steps to become a customer. In most instances, these metrics reflect new customers, however, you may experience an overlap with returning customers because of personalization limitations or factors like multiple conversions per click. Learn more about conversions from existing customers.
For advertisers with store goals
If you choose to optimize your store goals campaign for acquiring new customers, we’ll identify new customers based on one of the methods below:
- Past online purchase conversions, if they exist
- Existing customer lists that you share through Customer Match and label as such in the Conversions Summary Acquisition panel
Refer to the following table for more information on how new customer acquisition works with Performance Max campaigns for store goals.
|
New Customer Value mode |
New Customer Only mode |
|
|
Campaign with online sales and offline events |
|
|
|
Campaign with offline conversion events |
|
|
Bidding
New Customer Value mode (applicable only for purchase conversions)
Smart Bidding accounts for the new customer value you set and maximizes total conversion value including the additional value you specify for new customers. Smart Bidding factors the understanding that new customers help drive more overall value into bidding decisions.
You can use the recommended value that’s set as default when you select the new customer acquisition goal, if you’re unsure what your new customer value should be.
Learn how to set up the new customer acquisition goal so you can maximize new customer acquisition in your Performance Max or Search campaign bidding.
New Customer Only mode
Existing customers are excluded from bidding, and Smart Bidding will optimize towards your Max Conversions/tCPA or Max Conversion Value/tROAS bidding strategies.
Bidding strategies compatible with New Customer Only modes
| Mode | Bid Strategies |
|
New Customer Value Mode |
Value based bidding only:
|
|
New Customer Only Mode |
Value and cost based bidding:
|
Customer acquisition value
Customer acquisition value is the additional value adjustment to be added to a new customer’s first purchase conversion. Our recommendation is to set Customer acquisition value such that Customer acquisition value plus new customer's typical first purchase value represents the revenue that a typical new customer would bring over their lifetime. When you choose a value based bid strategy, you can use this total value as the basis to set your ROAS targets. Customer acquisition value is only used by campaigns that use Value based bidding strategies.
How we distinguish new customers from existing customers
There are 3 ways you can provide signals that help us identify new customers for your business. You can use one or any combination of the 3. Google detection will always be used by default.
Google detected
Uploaded audience list
- Create and upload your customer list following instructions on using Customer Match.
- Select your uploaded customer list by following these steps:
- In your Google Ads account, where cross account conversion tracking has been set up, click the Goals icon
- Click the Conversions drop down in the section menu.
- Click Summary.
- In the left "Conversions Summary" menu, click Edit in the "Customer acquisition" section.
- You’ll find the audience lists you’ve uploaded in the “Existing customers definition” box, or you can search for your audience list by typing the list name in the search field and selecting the box beside the correct list.
- Select up to 5 audience lists.
- Click Apply.
- In your Google Ads account, where cross account conversion tracking has been set up, click the Goals icon
New customer conversion tracking using tags (add-on)
Conversions from existing customers in “New Customer Only” mode
Even when you choose to bid for only new customers, there may be conversions from returning or existing customers that will be used towards your bidding goals. This may occur:
- If Google Ads isn’t able to identify an existing customer. For example: an existing customer is using a new or unrecognized device or browser.
- If there are multiple conversions, attributed to the same ad click, all conversions and conversion value will be considered towards your bidding goals (like max conversions or max conversion value, among others).
Troubleshooting for the new customer acquisition goal
New customer acquisition isn't running or has low serving
- In your Google Ads account, on the workspace bar, select campaign type as Performance Max or Search.
- Select the campaign from the list and click on it.
- In your Campaigns page, click on the Settings tab.
- Expand the Customer acquisition section.
- Confirm that the “New customers only” setting has been enabled and the “Optimize campaign for acquiring new customers” box is checked.
- Ensure the Conversion page is set up correctly.
- Click the Goals icon
- Click the Conversions drop down in the section menu.
- Click Summary.
- “New customer acquisition” will appear at the top or bottom of the page, depending on the goals of the campaign.
- NCA will be at the top of the page if purchase conversions are set up in the account.
- NCA will be at the bottom of the page if purchase conversions aren't set up.
- If NCA doesn’t appear in the Conversion page, then NCA hasn't been set up correctly.
- For non-retail advertisers, confirm if purchase conversions are within the last 30 days or have an existing customer user list added.
- Advertisers must use either of these options to use NCA.
- If NCA has been set up correctly, confirm when NCA was added to the campaign.
- Performance Max and Search campaigns need 1-2 weeks to adjust to any significant changes made to a campaign. After NCA is enabled, the campaign may take time to adjust to this new targeting and optimization setting.
- If there are no issues with the NCA setup, confirm if the Search campaign or Performance Max campaign has been set up correctly and is following best practices.