Online advertising giant Google will soon let marketers target ads to specific people using their email addresses when they use its search engine, Gmail or YouTube video platform.
Google’s Senior Vice President of Ads and Commerce, Sridhar Ramaswamy, announced the new Customer Match product in a blog post on Monday. The Wall Street Journal first reported Google’s plans for the feature in April.
The tool will enable marketers to target ads to their existing customers and potentially to tailor messaging to them based on their purchase histories or other information.
For example, say a consumer shares her email address with a clothing retailer when purchasing items in-store. The retailer can then upload that address to Google to identify her when she’s using Google search or YouTube, and to target search or video ads to her for similar or complementary products, provided she signed in to Google with the same email address.
Marketers can also use “lookalike” audiences to target ads to users who exhibit similar behaviors to their existing customers, using a tool Google calls “Similar Audiences.”
Google’s online ad competitor Facebook has offered similar email-based ad targeting across its social network since 2012, with a product it calls Custom Audiences. That product is highly regarded among direct-response marketers, suggesting Google’s foray into the space could also be lucrative for the company.
“With Customer Match, your brand is right there, with the right message, at the moment your customer is most receptive,” Mr. Ramaswamy wrote in his blog post.
Customer Match and Similar audiences will be made available to Google advertisers over the next few weeks, the company said.