The Google Ads Customer Match Integration is an integration you can set up with your Google Ads account. The integration allows you to add or remove Agillic users from specific Google Customer Match lists. This gives you more control over which recipients should be exposed to specific Ad campaigns from your Google Ads account by using Agillic data. Once the Integration is complete, you can use the integration in a Google Customer Match Step in a flow.
As Google Ads Customer Match is a third-party service, Agillic isn't able to offer support on how their service should be used or set up on their sites. Therefore, we refer to Google help centre or Google Developers where their own documentation is available.
In this article, we will go through:
- What to know before setting up the Google Ads Customer Match Integration
- How to Set up the Google Ads Customer Match Integration
- About the Match Rate
What to know before setting up the Google Ads Customer Match Integration
The Google Ads Customer Match feature is not for all advertisers. Therefore, to make use of the Integration in Agillic, you need to meet all Google's requirements. You can read more about the Google Ads Customer Match feature and the requirements for using it here: all Google requirements.
You can only connect individual Google Ads accounts to Agillic. Google Ads manager accounts (MCC) can't be connected. So, any Google Ads account that's managed in a manager account should be connected to Agillic individually. The Agillic user who connects a Google Ads account must have Admin access for that account. Multiple Google Ads accounts can be connected to Agillic, but each account needs to be connected by the same Agillic user.
Note: Please be aware that only 'Customer Lists' created via the Agillic Connector can be added to/removed from.
Google Customer Match Data Security
As Google Customer Match is a Third Party integration with Agillic, Agillic is following Google's Ads Data Security guidelines and Data Models. This means that all recipient data sent from Agillic through the Google Ads API is hashed using the SHA-256 algorithm. The hashed data will then be matched with related data regarding the recipients in Google.
Info: SHA-256 algorithm is an industry-standard cryptographically secure hashing algorithm.
We do recommend you to map all necessary Data Fields in the Connectors Section in the System Settings, in order to get the best chances to get as many recipients matched on Google Ads as possible.
You can find more information about the Google Customer Match process and the Data Security on Google Ads Help.
How to Set up the Google Ads Customer Match Integration
- Log in to your Staging or Production Instance.
- Open the Administration module by clicking the Settings icon in the top right corner of the screen.
- In the left sidebar, select Connectors from the Integrations subsection.
- Scroll down to the Google Ads Customer Match section.
- Select the 'Authorise and Test' button.
- A pop-up will appear. Click on the link in the Pop-up and new window will appear.
- Log into your Google account to authorise the integration.
The connection between Agillic and the Google Customer Match is now authenticated. As this is a shared setting, you only have to configure the integration once on either Staging or Production.
Google Ads Customer Match settings in the Settings module
Tip: Refresh the Agillic Connectors Page once the authentication process is complete
After authentication, we will test if your accounts are configured to use Customer Match. If not, Agillic will request Google to evaluate the account and enable Customer Match. Read the requirements here.
To find out how to set up a Google Customer Match Flow, read our article All You Need to Know About Steps.
Google have a minimum matching rate of 1000 recipients in order to update the audience, if this isn't met Google will not update (add or remove) recipients from the campaign.
About the Match Rate
Now you need to improve the match rate between the recipients in Agillic and Google Ads. This is done by mapping your data in Agillic to a set of standard fields in Google Ads.
Mapping Person Data Fields to be matched with Google Ads Customer Match
It may take up to 48 hours from when you register for actions to take effect. There may also be a matching period of up to 48 hours for matching recipients in Google ads.
Also, Google states that you have to add a minimum of 1,000 users to a Google Customer Match List to make sure the ad shows.
The more recipient details you transfer to Google Ads, the higher chance of a match. As an email address is the primary indicator, the Person Data containing the email address should be the minimum transferred over to Google Ads. Map as many other Google Ads fields as possible.
However, you also need to be aware that in order to match recipients on address information, Google requires that all four Person Data are included in the files transferred. Hence, if you're not able to pair a Person Data for all four fields, matching will be based solely on email and potentially phone number if selected.
Please note that if you wish to transfer the country code, it should be in 2 letter format, also known as ISO 3166-1 alpha-2.
Read more about Google Ads Customer Match on adwords.google.com.
Re-authentication of your accounts
Every third month, you will be asked to re-authenticate your account. This is done in order to ensure that you still have ownership of the Ads account you are transferring audiences to.
In order to get notified of this, you should input your email in the Alerts field in System Settings.
Read about how to do this here.