Google will soon roll out a tool called Customer Match. This tool aims to let marketers send advertisements to a targeted list of email addresses. For consumers to receive such advertisements, they would need to subscribe to retailers and log into their Google account. The search engine company plans to introduce this new feature to the public in April next year.
Fast Company said that advertisements by marketers will only be sent to consumers who have registered their email address through Gmail and YouTube. Costumer Match allows uploading a list of email addresses which can then be matched to signed-in users, according to Google through its own blog post. The blog also mentioned that for ads like travel brands, rewards can still be tracked as consumers plan for their next trip.
The Wall Street Journal cited another example on how this new tool for advertisement works. Retailers can upload a customer's email addresses to Google in order to identify when the said customer accessed Google search or YouTube. As such, future similar advertisements will be sent to the same email address, provided that the consumer is logged in to his/her Gmail account.
The WSJ article also mentioned Facebook offering the same email-based ad through their own product called Custom Audiences. Google's Senior VP for Ads and Commerce Sridhar Ramaswamy wrote in his blog post, "With Customer Match, your brand is right there, with the right message, at the moment your customer is most receptive." More so, the new feature will be available in the next few weeks.
On the other hand, The Verge reported that consumers need not worry because their email addresses will remain anonymous for everyone. It implies that advertisement companies will not be able to make personalized profiles of individuals, but will still be compiled in lists with general customer habits such as Google search histories as well as YouTube viewing to target their ads with.
Customer Match enable marketers to use a list of email addresses to target users across Google services. However, only customers with an active Gmail account will be included in these compiled lists.
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