The new customer acquisition goal uses Performance Max or Search campaigns to help you gain new customers. You can choose to optimize the campaign to bid higher for new customers or to bid for new customers exclusively.
If your campaign isn’t optimizing to acquire new customers, here are a few common scenarios you may encounter and steps to troubleshoot.
On this page
- Lower than expected performance
- High proportion of returning customers
- High proportion of unknown customers
Lower than expected performance
Occasionally, Performance Max or Search campaigns using the new customer acquisition goal may serve fewer ads than expected. This may be due to incorrect campaign setup. Follow the steps below to troubleshoot.
Step 1 of 2: Confirm your campaign settings
- In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon
.
- Click the Campaigns drop down in the section menu.
- Click Campaigns.
- On the “Campaigns” page, find the Performance Max or Search campaign that you want to edit.
- Click the gear icon
beside the campaign name to open the “Settings” panel.
- Expand the “Customer acquisition” section, and confirm that “Only bid for new customers” is checked.
- Expand the “Customer acquisition” section, and confirm that:
- The “Adjust your bidding to help you gain new customers” box is checked.
- If you’ve selected to “Only bid for new customers” and are concerned about your performance not being optimized, we recommend to instead select “Bid higher for new customers (recommended)” as this will not limit the reach of your campaign.
- If you’re concerned about your performance optimization after selecting “Only bid for new customers”, consider choosing “Bid higher for new customers (recommended)”. Bidding higher for new customers won’t limit the reach of your campaign.
Step 2 of 2: Confirm your conversion settings
Note: The “Summary” page may appear differently depending on how your conversions are set up. Review the following details before you begin.
- Your new customer acquisition goal will be at the top of the page if purchase conversions are set up.
- Your new customer acquisition goal will be at the bottom of the page if purchase conversions aren't set up.
- Your new customer acquisition goal won’t appear in the “Conversions” page if the goal hasn't been set up correctly.
- Click the Goals icon
from the left navigation panel.
- Click the Conversions drop down in the section menu.
- Click Summary.
- For non-retail advertisers, confirm that the purchase conversions listed are within the last 30 days or have an existing customer user list added. You must use either of these options to enable a new customer acquisition goal.
- If your new customer acquisition goal has been set up correctly, confirm when it was added to the campaign.
- Performance Max and Search campaigns need 1-2 weeks to adjust to any significant changes made to a campaign. Your campaign may take time to adjust to this new targeting and optimization setting.
- If there are no issues with setup, confirm that the Search campaign or Performance Max campaign has been set up correctly.
High proportion of returning customers
If your campaign is specifically only bidding for new customers, you may sometimes still notice some returning customers for your campaign. This may occur:
- New and existing customers will only be reported on for campaigns with customer acquisition enabled (follow steps in “Check your campaign settings” above).
- If Google Ads isn’t able to identify an existing customer. For example, if 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).
High proportion of unknown customers
There are several scenarios where you may notice a high proportion of “unknown” classified customers for your campaign optimizing to new customer acquisition.
- New and existing customers will only be reported on for campaigns with customer acquisition enabled (follow steps in “Check your campaign settings” above)
- Check the date range when customer acquisition was enabled in your campaign - the new and existing customer designation will only be provided going forward, and not retroactively. When evaluating performance for your customer acquisition campaign, select a date range after this setting was enabled in your campaign.
- Non-purchase conversions will not be classified into new and existing customers.
- Users may have turned off ads personalization or no cookies are available.
- Too many conversions may be coming from offers in prohibited categories (for example, alcohol or gambling) which cannot be tracked for new and returning customer designation.
