Google Ads Audiences

Remarketing campaigns show ads to people who visited your online store but didn't buy. They see your ads when they visit other websites. Bloomreach helps you create automated campaigns that deliver personalized messages to these customers.

This guide shows you how to create a remarketing campaign that builds an audience from your customer list and uploads it to Google Ads.

Choose your integration method

You can connect Bloomreach with Google Ads audiences in 2 ways.

Method 1: Google Ads Customer Match (recommended)

Connect your Google Ads account directly with Bloomreach. Use Google's Customer Match feature to create custom audiences based on:

• Customer email addresses or phone numbers.
• Pre-hashed email addresses or phone numbers (email_sha256 and phone_sha256).
• Mobile device IDs (for mobile app retargeting).
• User IDs from Google Ads tags.

Method 2: Google Analytics integration (experimental)

Connect your Google Analytics account with Bloomreach. Create a Google Analytics audience based on cookies, then import it to Google Ads.

Customer Match requirements

Customer Match isn't available to all Google Ads advertisers. Your Google Ads account must have:

• Good policy compliance history with Google Ads.
• Good payment history in Google Ads.
• At least 90 days of Google Ads history.
• More than USD 50,000 total lifetime spend on Google Ads.
• Edit rights for your Google Ads account.

Learn more in Google's Customer Match policy.

Consent requirements for Google Ads API

With Google Ads API version 15 and above, you need both required consents:

• ad_user_data
• ad_personalization

You're responsible for tracking the right consents and making sure they work with the Ad Audience node.

Set up your integration

Step 1: Connect your Google Ads account

1. Go to integrations in Bloomreach.
2. Connect your project to your Google Ads account.

Single tenant instances

If you see "This app is blocked" or similar errors, contact Support. Google requires verification before integrating because Bloomreach handles sensitive customer data.

Step 2: Create your audience scenario

1. Create a scenario that defines your target customer group for retargeting.
2. Add them to your Google Ads audience.
3. Build the flow as shown in the scenario editor.

Step 3: Configure the Ad Audiences node

1. Double-click the Ad audiences node to open its settings.
2. Select Google Ads, then Customer match.
3. Click Customer matching to enable matching by email, phone, mobile advertiser ID, Google Ads ID, and pre-hashed identifiers (email_sha256 and phone_sha256).

Customer matching options

The system checks that pre-hashed values are correctly formatted as SHA256 before sending them to Google Ads. This prevents double hashing and ensures successful audience matching, and meets Google Ads Customer Match API requirements for privacy.

Step 4: Set up your audience

1. From the Audience dropdown, select + Create new.
2. Give your audience a name and save it.
3. Click Save again to return to the scenario editor.
4. Save the entire scenario.
5. Click Test to see how many customers will flow to the Ad Audiences node.
6. Start the scenario to add your defined customers to your Google Ads audience.

Step 5: Verify your audience was created

1. Go to your Google Ads account.
2. In the Tools menu, go to Shared Library > Audience manager.
3. Check that your audience uploaded successfully.

Work with User ID audiences

If you need User ID audiences, follow these steps:

1. Track the User ID to Google first, using special tracking pixels from the tag manager or your existing tagging setup.

2. Create a new User ID-based audience, or pick an existing one, in the Ad Audiences node.

3. In the Customer matching section, configure which customer ID or attribute gets sent to Google Ads.

Google Ads pixel code

<!-- use this tag to send Bloomreach external ID to Google Ads and then use this User ID in the retargeting scenarios -->
<script>
  gtag('event', 'page_view', {
    'send_to': '[[GoogleAdsConversionID]]', // 
    'user_id': '{{ customer_ids.cookie if customer_ids.cookie is string else customer_ids.cookie | last }}'  // Bloomreach cookie, feel free to customize
  });
</script>

Understand the upload process

When you upload your audience to Google Ads:

1. Google Ads checks your uploaded data format.
2. Google Ads matches your data to customers on Google's networks.
3. You can add the list to your targeting right away, but matching takes up to 24 hours.
4. When matching completes, your ads start showing to your new audience.

Lists need at least 1,000 matched users before Google Ads will serve ads to them.

Manage audience membership

Membership duration

Google Ads integration sends a membership_life_span of 180 days when creating an audience. This only applies to audiences created directly from Bloomreach. Existing audiences—for example, ones created manually in Google and then updated via Bloomreach—might have different durations, set during their original creation.

Remove customers

When customers request data removal, you can choose to add or remove them from Google Ads audiences.

Handle consent policies

Ad Audiences nodes track events automatically. This enables simple evaluation of retargeting scenarios that contribute to a customer's single customer view.

Consent policy settings are part of the Ad Audiences node. This keeps retargeting scenarios easier to design and ensures only customers with proper consent get pushed to Google Ads audiences.

With Bloomreach version 1.254 and above, the Ad Audiences node uses Google Ads API v15. The consent category includes both ad_user_data and ad_personalization consent.

Share with Google Marketing Platform

Google lets you share Google Ads audiences with:

• Display & Video 360 (former DoubleClick Bid Manager)
• Search Ads 360 (former DoubleClick Search)

Related resources

For more detailed information, see:

• Ad audiences
• Ad audiences hashing
• Ad audiences - use cases
• Best Practices for Ad Audience Management