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.
There are 3 ways you can provide signals that help Google identify new customers for your business. You can use one or any combination of the 3. Note that Google detection will always be used by default.
On this page
- New customers detected by Google
- New customers from an uploaded audience list
- New customers from a conversion tracking tag
- Conversions from existing customers
New customers detected by Google
This is automatically used when you select the “new customer” acquisition goal. If your Google Ads conversion tracking is set to track “purchases”, Google can automatically create an audience list based on up to the last 540 days of campaign activity and tracked purchases. This is the easiest method for distinguishing new customers from existing customers, but would be less comprehensive because users can remove cookies and opt out.
New customers from an uploaded audience list
You can also 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:
After you’ve created and uploaded your customer list by following instructions on using Customer Match, follow the steps below to select your uploaded customer list.
- In your Google Ads account, 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.
New customers from a conversion tracking tag
You can set up new customer conversion tracking using tagging. This method requires more setup from you, but helps provide you greater control over which conversions are reported as new or returning. Learn more about new customer reporting.
"Unknown" Google-detected classification
The Google-detected classification will be set to “Unknown” if most of your uploaded audience lists aren't shared with the Google Ads account attached to your Performance Max or Search campaign. Share your uploaded audience lists to view your customer segmentation.
Google tag, Google Tag Manager, or Firebase classifications
If you use new customer conversion tracking in the Google tag, Google Tag Manager, or Firebase, we use the values provided in the tag for “new”, “returning”, or “unknown" customers in place of Google autodetection.
Conversions from existing customers
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, 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).
