Measure your lifecycle goals campaigns

In this article, you’ll learn where to view lifecycle goals reporting, how to assess performance, and how customer segments are determined in your reporting.

On this page

• Where to find your lifecycle goals reporting
• How to measure the impact of your lifecycle goals campaigns
• Optimizing lifecycle goal performance
• How customers are classified by segment in reporting

Where to find your lifecycle goals reporting

Depending on which lifecycle goals you’ve enabled, you can monitor the number of new, high value new, returning, lapsed, or high value lapsed customers you’re driving in your campaign and report on key metrics.

Where to view reporting

1. In the "Campaigns" table, you can add the "New vs. returning customers" segment to your table by clicking Segment. This allows you to view your conversions and conversion value by the following categories, depending on which lifecycle goals you have activated:
   • New customer acquisition goal:
     • New customers: The number of conversions and conversion value from people who purchased something online from your website or app for the first time. New customers are identified when they fulfill one or more of the following conditions:
       • They haven't made a purchase within the last 540 days (this applies when using the Google auto-detection system).
       • They're not included in the existing customer list that you specified in account level customer acquisition settings.
       • They've been identified as new customers using the new customer reporting tag.
     • Returning customers: The number of conversions and conversion value from people who purchased something online from your website or app previously. Returning customers are identified when they fulfill one or more of the following conditions:
       • They've made a purchase within the last 540 days (this applies when using the Google auto-detection system).
       • They're included in the existing customer list that you specified in account-level customer acquisition settings.
       • They've been identified as existing customers using the new customer reporting tag.

Note: In some instances, your "New customers only" ads might be shown to returning customers as well due to privacy and technical reasons. Learn more about Troubleshooting for the new customer acquisition goal.

• New customers - High value (available if you’ve opted in to High Value New Customer Mode): The number of conversions and conversion value from people who purchased something online from your website or app for the first time, and who Google has identified as high-value based on similarities to customers in your high-value existing customer list.
• Unknown: The number of conversions and conversion value from customers we can’t report about due to policies around legally or culturally sensitive categories or conversions we cannot identify as new or existing due to measurement limitations on iOS and/or user-level personalization settings. Learn more about how to troubleshoot a high volume of "Unknown" conversions.

• Customer retention goal:
  • Win-back customers: The number of conversions and conversion value from lapsed customers who were lapsed, according to your lapsed customer list.
  • Win-back customers - High value: The number of conversions and conversion value from lapsed customers who are high-value, according to your lapsed customer list and high-value existing customer list.

2. In the "Campaigns" table, you can click on Columns to review the following key metrics for the lifecycle goals you’ve enabled in your campaign:
   • New customer acquisition goal:
     • New customers: The number of new customers that you have acquired from the campaign. If you’d like to see the number of high-value new customers driven by the campaign, add this column and segment by "New vs. returning".
     • New customer lifetime value: The conversion value adjustment corresponding to acquisition conversions (first purchase conversions determined to be from new customers).

Example: If you have 5 new customer acquisition conversions and the value assigned to new customer acquisition is $25 USD, the additional new customer lifetime value column would show $125 USD.

• All new customer lifetime value: The conversion value adjustment corresponding to acquisition conversions (first purchase conversions determined to be from new customers), including purchase conversions that are non-biddable, i.e. set to "secondary".

• Customer retention goal:
  • Win-back customers: The number of lapsed customers who purchased something online from your website or app. If you’d like to see the number of high-value lapsed customers driven by the campaign, add this column and segment by "New vs. returning".
  • Win-back customer lifetime value: The conversion value adjustment corresponding to lapsed conversions (first purchase conversions determined to be from lapsed customers).
• All win-back customer lifetime value: The conversion value adjustment corresponding to lapsed conversions (first purchase conversions determined to be from lapsed customers), including purchase conversions that are non-biddable, i.e. set to "secondary".

How to measure the impact of your lifecycle goal campaigns

To assess the performance of your lifecycle goal campaign, we recommend performing a pre- and post-testing to measure the ratio of customers from your preferred segments who converted.

For the pre/post test, you’ll need to rely on your own analytical tools to measure performance, as lifecycle metrics only become available in Google Ads after you’ve enabled the lifecycle goal.

Measure the respective customer ratio driven by your campaign (the number of customers from a specific segment who converted divided by the total number of customers who converted) using your analytics platform prior to and after enabling lifecycle goals.

Depending on the lifecycle bid modes you’re using, you may wish to consider the following customer ratios:

• New customer ratio
• High value new customer ratio
• Lapsed customer ratio
• High value lapsed customer ratio

We don’t support incrementality testing of lifecycle goals within Google Ads, however, you can use the Conversion Lift based on geography and Conversion Lift based on Users features to test if your media mix is delivering incremental new customers to your business. We recommend opting into the new customer acquisition goal within these tests if you are measuring incremental new customers.

Optimizing lifecycle goal performance

Below are common concerns regarding lifecycle goal performance and how to address them:

• High proportion of unknown or returning customers
  • Recommendation: See the section below on addressing a high proportion of unknown or returning customers.
• I want to bid more for new customers vs. returning ones while maintaining my tROAS
  • Recommendation: Increase your new customer value adjustment and leave tROAS as is.
• Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is higher than other channels
  • Recommendation: Keep in mind that CAC is usually higher for new customers, as acquiring new customers is generally more costly but drives higher long term value for your business. It’s important to consider the lifetime value of new customers when evaluating performance. That said, if the increase in CAC is too large for your business, you can decrease your new customer value adjustment and increase your tROAS. However, note that this may result in a lower proportion of new customers.
• New customer ratio is declining over time
  • Recommendation: Increase your new customer value adjustment and decrease your tROAS.

How customers are classified by segments in reporting

By default, Google uses the same methods used in your lifecycle goal targeting settings (Google autodetection, Customer Match lists, and tag-based remarketing lists) for measurement. However, these methods are not foolproof and relying on them alone may result in reporting gaps in the form of a high proportion of "Unknown" or "Returning" conversions in your reporting. For the most accurate reporting, we recommend setting up the new vs. existing customer parameter in your conversion tracking tag.

Using the new vs. existing customer parameter provides Google with ground-truth reporting that acts as a feedback loop for Google to improve its new vs existing customer detection model.

High proportion of unknown or returning conversions

Google may not always be able to accurately detect whether a customer is new, returning, or lapsed. As a result you may see a higher than expected number of conversions classified as unknown or returning in your reporting.

High volume of unknown conversions

Causes:

• Lifecycle goal reporting is limited to Purchase conversions. Non-purchase conversions will automatically be classified as unknown in reporting.
• Conversion data prior to enabling lifecycle goals is categorized as unknown.
• Conversions on iOS can’t be classified as new vs. returning due to ATT.
• Users turned off ads personalization.
• Conversions that come from offers that are in sensitive interest categories are classified as unknown in reporting.

What to do:

• Check your date range to ensure you are only viewing reporting from after you implemented lifecycle goals.
• If the issue is caused by non-purchase conversions, no action is needed. For campaigns with customer lifecycle goals that optimize for non-purchase conversion goals these will be reported as unknown conversions.
• Implement new customer acquisition reporting in the Google tag to reduce the impact of ATT, ads personalization settings, and sensitive categories.

High volume of returning conversions

Causes:

• If you’re using our New Customer Value Mode, your new customer value adjustment may not be high enough.
• If you’re using New Customer Only Mode, it’s possible that a small percentage of your traffic may still be from returning customers. This may happen in instances when it was uncertain whether the customer was new or returning. It may also happen when there are multiple conversions attributed to the same ad click depending on your conversion count settings.
• If you’ve implemented new customer acquisition reporting in the Google tag incorrectly then you may see a high volume of returning conversions.

What to do:

• To bid more competitively for new customers, increase the new customer value adjustment.
• If you’ve already set up new customer acquisition reporting in the Google tag, double check your setup to ensure it accurately reflects new vs returning customers.

Many of the limitations above, such as ITP restrictions on iOS, can be mitigated if you provide your own first-party categorization of new vs returning customers via new customer acquisition reporting in the Google tag.

How reporting works with your conversion count settings

If your conversion count settings are configured to count "every" conversion (the default setting), then Google will count every conversion associated with a particular ad interaction, including repeat purchases, as long as the conversion is completed within your conversion window. In your new customer acquisition reporting, all such repeat purchases made by a new customer will be classified as “new”. If your conversion count settings are configured to count "one" conversion, then repeat purchases will be reported as returning conversions . You can view your conversions by new vs. returning by adding the “New vs. returning customers” segment to your campaigns table.

Note that the “New Customers” column displays a distinct count of new customers irrespective of the repeat purchase rate. Likewise, the “New Customer Lifetime value” column reflects the conversion value adjustment for the first purchase conversion completed by a new customer and therefore does not include repeat purchases.

Reporting for lapsed customers works the same as described above – repeat purchases from lapsed customers (within your conversion window) will be categorized as "Win-back".