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This policy applies to advertisers using Customer Match for campaigns on Search, Shopping, Display, YouTube, or Gmail.
Requirements for using Customer Match
To use Customer Match, your account must have:- A good history of policy compliance.
- A good payment history.
Features available to advertisers depend on which requirements your account satisfies:
- All policy compliant advertisers can use Customer Match and similar audiences for Customer Match in the 'Observation' setting and for Exclusions.
- If you have 90 days of Google Ads history and more than USD $50,000 total lifetime spend, you can use Customer Match and similar audiences for Customer Match in the 'Targeting' and 'Observation' settings, manual bid adjustments and Exclusions. For advertisers whose accounts are managed in currencies other than USD, your spend amount will be converted to USD using the average monthly conversion rate for that currency.
| Customer Match features available | Accounts with 90 days of history in Google Ads and more than USD $50,000 lifetime spend | All policy compliant accounts* |
| 'Targeting' setting | Yes | No |
| 'Observation' setting | Yes | Yes |
| Similar audiences | Yes |
Yes (in 'Observation' setting) |
| Manual bid adjustments | Yes | No |
| Exclusions | Yes | Yes |
*Your accounts must have a good history of policy compliance and good payment history.
If your account does not have a good history of policy compliance and does not meet the above criteria, then your account is currently ineligible to use Customer Match.
Additionally, for personalised ads on Google Search, Shopping, Gmail and YouTube, first-party and third-party data use policies apply.
Collecting customer data
When using Customer Match, you may only upload customer information that you collected in the first-party context, such as information that you collected from your websites, apps, physical shops or other situations where customers shared their information directly with you.
Examples:
- You collected information from a customer who had purchased an item from your website.
- You collected information from a customer who registered to receive marketing messages through your apps.
- You collected information from a customer who signed up for your loyalty programme in your physical shop.
You must also:
- Ensure that:
- Your privacy policy discloses that you share customer data with third parties to perform services on your behalf, and
- You 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.
- Only use Google’s approved API or interface to upload customer data.
- Comply with all applicable laws and regulations, including any self-regulatory or industry codes that may apply.
Additional requirements
You are prohibited from:
- Running ads that collect personally identifiable information, except for Gmail ads with HTML forms that comply with the Gmail ads policy.
- Uploading information for any customer who's under the age of 13 or that was collected from any site or app directed at children under the age of 13.
- Creating ad content which implies knowledge of personally identifiable information or sensitive information about your customers (see below for more information).
- Using a customer list that targets an overly narrow or specific audience. For example, you can’t combine a customer list with other targeting criteria (such as geographic limitations) if it results in an ad targeted to a relatively small number of users.
- Advertising for products related to sensitive information, such as pharmaceutical products, in a Customer Match campaign (see below for more information) or
- Running any ads that are prohibited by our Google Ads policies.
Restrictions on sensitive categories
As defined under the Personalised Advertising Policy principles applicable to remarketing, advertisers can’t use sensitive interest categories to target ads to users or to promote advertisers’ products or services. These policies also apply to remarketing with Customer Match.
Additionally, you can't use data from your Customer Match campaigns to identify sensitive interest categories related to your customers.
For comprehensive information about what’s considered a sensitive interest category under Personalized ads and Customer match policies, see the Personalised advertising policies.
What happens if you violate our policies?
- Compliance review: We may review your business for compliance with the Customer Match policy at any time. If we contact you to request information related to compliance, you're required to respond in a timely manner and swiftly take any corrective action needed to comply with our policies. If you’re a manager account, we may also contact your managed accounts to verify compliance.
- Notification of non-compliance: If we believe that you're violating the Customer Match policy, we'll contact you to request corrective action. If you fail to make the requested corrections you may be denied the ability to use Customer Match, or your access to your Google Ads accounts may be suspended. You can contact us if you want to appeal your Customer Match policy violation. In cases of serious or repeated violations, your account may be suspended immediately and without notification. Learn more about suspended accounts
