You might probably already heard of Google’s Customer Match feature since 2015, but perhaps not so sure what it is and how it is different from remarketing?
Remarketing is the most common retargeting method used by companies. By storing cookies to record what the end-users likes and how they interact with the internet, companies segment and target different customers with different advertising strategies based on business goals.
However, cookies have expiration days. If cookies has 30 expiration days, the data will be erased, which means, a user will not see the tailored advertising any more after 30 days. Besides, it happens very often that users delete their cookies manually in the browser. This is apparently a downside about targeting based on cookies.
But Customer Match has nothing to do with cookies. Instead, this technique uses email address database. If a company upload a list of acquired email address in adwords, Google is able to analyse the interests of the email address owners. Therefore, it is a quite useful tool in terms of targeting related audience, and similar audience. Applicable platforms include Google Search Campaigns, Display Ads, YouTube and Gmail.
Where can companies acquire the email address? Purchased list, newsletter subscribers and database from your LinkedIn profile, are all good sources.
Customer match is definitely a good feature to try out. Nevertheless, advertisers need to be very careful with the legal aspects of privacy. According to General Data Protection Regulation that will take effect in 2018, companies must keep a full track of users’ consent to store and use their personal data.
How to make use of email list and respect users’ privacy and data freedom remains a big, and challenging topic in the years to come.
The Digital Teahouse 