Digital Lexicon Hub

A Google Ads feature that targets or excludes people by matching hashed customer emails, phone numbers and addresses to Google accounts.

Customer Match lets a business use its own CRM data to show different messages to customers and prospects, exclude existing clients from acquisition ads and give Smart Bidding a strong first-party signal.

A SaaS company syncs 12,000 customer emails from its CRM through Data Manager each day. Current customers are excluded from acquisition campaigns, while trial users without a paid plan see upgrade ads on Search and YouTube.

Only records that match signed-in Google accounts can be used, so match rates are often well below the list size. Policy requirements, consent signals for EEA users, and the 540-day membership expiry all constrain use.

Email, phone, first name and last name are normalized, for example lowercased with phones in E.164 format, and hashed with SHA-256, while country and postal code stay unhashed. Google compares hashes with signed-in accounts, and the file is marked for deletion after matching. Lists work on Search, Shopping, YouTube, Gmail and Display, and Smart Bidding uses eligible lists. It is a core use of First-Party Data alongside Enhanced Conversions.