The most important formatting guideline is to ensure that your column headers in your customer data file use the exact names specified in English. The rest of your data may be in any language, but the column headers must be in English.
This article provides guidelines to follow when formatting your customer data file.
Basic formatting guidelines
Your data must be in a CSV file, encoded in either ASCII or UTF-8 (UTF-16 is not supported). Use a template or create your own file using a combination of the following header names in English: "Email", "Phone", "First Name", "Last Name", "Country" and "Zip". You can upload your Mobile Device ID using this template.
To keep your data secure, you can hash your customer data yourself using the SHA256 algorithm, or Google Ads will hash it for you using the same SHA256 algorithm, which is the industry standard for one-way hashing.
Customer data must be collected in compliance with Customer Match policies.
If you run into any issues with the upload process, learn how to fix Customer match issues.
Column header formatting guidelines (Use English only)
Email address matching: Use 'Email' as the column header name in your data file.
Phone matching: Use 'Phone' as the column header name in your data file.
Postal address matching: For postal address matching, your data file must contain these 4 column headers: “First Name”, “Last Name”, “Country” and “Zip”. If any of the required column header names are missing, your upload will probably result in an error.
Combined email address, postal address and phone matching: Your file must contain these 6 column headers: “Email”, “Phone”, “First Name”, “Last Name”, “Country” and “Zip". If you have multiple email addresses, postal addresses or phone numbers for a single customer, your file may include multiple “Email”, “Zip” or “Phone” columns. You only have to include data fields that you find relevant to your customers. You may upload one data field, such as email addresses, or multiple data fields, such as postal addresses and phone numbers.
Mobile Device ID matching: Use “Mobile Device ID” as the only column header in your data file.
Each column header in your data file must be included in English only.
Formatting guidelines for uploading unhashed data
The column header names in your customer data file must be in English. To complete an API upload, your data must be hashed. Follow the steps to format hashed data.
Phone
First Name
Last Name
Country
Zip
Mobile Device ID
Formatting guidelines for uploading hashed data
The column headers names in your customer data file must be in English.
To keep your data secure, you can hash your customer data yourself using the SHA256 algorithm.
