How to provide consent for Customer Match

As a part of Google’s ongoing commitment to a privacy-centric digital advertising ecosystem, we are strengthening the enforcement of our EU user consent policy (EU UCP).

If you use Customer Match, you must adhere to the EU user consent policy to use ad personalisation. In 2024, our enforcement action will also impact measurement features and apply to data from:

To keep using applicable tags/SDKs for measurement, and for ad personalisation and remarketing features, you must collect consent for use of personal data from end users based in the EEA and share consent signals with Google for these use cases.

The requirements also apply if you are using Google Ads data with a Google service.

This article explains how to provide consent for Customer Match in your Google Ads account.

How it works

For users in the EEA, you’ll need to ensure you are passing granted consent signals to Google to use Customer Match for ad personalisation. There are four ways for you to ensure you are passing the required consent signals while uploading 1P data to Google:

Offline first-party data ingestion:

• Provide consent with the Google Ads API
• Provide consent via a Partner and the Audience Partner API
• Provide consent manually in the Audience manager in your Google Ads account

Online first-party data ingestion:

• Provide consent with conversion-based customer lists

Providing consent for offline first-party data ingestion:

To provide consent with the Google Ads API

The Google Ads API v15 introduces the consent object that specifies two distinct types of consent. To adhere to the EU user consent policy and continue using Customer Match for users in the EEA, advertisers must integrate with the Google Ads API v15 and set the consent signals when uploading data for Customer Match.

If these consents are missing, the consent value is determined as not consented. Data from unconsented EEA users will not be processed and cannot be used for ad personalisation using Customer Match.

Starting in March 2024, for Customer Match lists to be used in the EEA, both consent fields of the 'ConsentStatus' type must be set to 'GRANTED' in order to indicate that you have received the required user consent. These consent fields are:

To provide consent for Customer Match with the Google Ads API, follow the instructions in this blog post.

To provide consent through a partner

To provide consent for Customer Match via a partner using the Audience Partner API, follow the guidance in this Customer Match Upload partner FAQ.

To provide consent manually in your Audience manager in your Google Ads account

To provide consent for Customer Match by manually uploading user data:

1. In your Google Ads account, click the Tools icon .
2. Click the Shared library drop-down in the section menu.
3. Click Audience manager.
4. Click Your data segments tab on top of the page.
5. Click the plus button to create a new segment.
6. Select Customer list from the drop-down menu.
7. Under 'Data source' select Upload a file manually and click Continue.
8. Under 'Data type' select the data type you’d like to upload – Upload emails, phones and/or postal addresses, upload user IDs or upload mobile device IDs.
9. Depending on the Data type that is selected, different options will appear in the 'Data to upload' section.
   • Upload emails, phones and/or postal addresses
     1. Upload your CSV file by clicking Drop file here or Browse, then follow step 10 onwards.
   • Upload user IDs
     1. Upload your CSV file by clicking Drop file here or Browse, then follow step 10 onwards.
   • Upload mobile device IDs
     1. If this option is selected, there will be an option to select either Android or iOS platform.
     2. Then Look up your app.
     3. Upload your CSV file by clicking Drop file here or Browse, then follow step 10 onwards.
10. Click Edit data use settings to modify data use across Google services. By default, all Google services will receive the lists of consented users that you upload. You can update this setting to select specific Google services at any time. Any changes made will be applied to all data sources and are not limited to Customer Match data uploads. Learn more about Google's core platform services.
11. If you agree, tick the box 'This data was collected and is being shared with Google in compliance with Google's Customer Match policies'. You must obtain consent for such sharing where required by law or any applicable Google policies governing personalised ads and/or user consent including Google’s EU user consent policy.
    • Note: You must upload only consented data via this manual upload.
12. Set a membership duration. The default membership duration is unlimited, but you can set a custom time limit.
13. Click Upload and create list.
14. You can view the progress of uploading your data file under 'Audiences lists'. This process may take up to 48 hours to complete.
15. Once your data has uploaded, you’ll see a file upload success page. You’ll see information about the number of rows that successfully uploaded and your match rate percentage.
16. You’ll also see the last five file operations and understand the upload statistics for those operations.
17. To successfully use your customer data file, it’s important to ensure that you format your customer data file correctly.

Providing consent for online first-party data ingestion:

To provide consent with conversion-based customer lists

Before you can provide consent signals with conversion-based customer lists, you need to make sure that you’ve enabled consent mode.

Once you’ve enabled consent mode, then you can proceed to using conversion-based customer lists. Learn more about setting up conversion-based customer lists.