Google’s Smart Shopping product is beta testing a new Conversion goal: New Customer Acquisition. Dubbed “NCA,” this new goal type allows advertisers to set Smart Shopping campaigns to optimize towards acquiring new customers specifically.
The information appeared on LinkedIn today, via Steven Johns, a digital marketing consultant at Door4:
What is Smart Shopping?
Unlike manually-managed Shopping campaigns in Google, Smart Shopping automates the campaign by using its machine learning to distribute and test ads on its own. It still utilizes the feed-based data in a normal Shopping campaign, and your ads are eligible to be shown across search, display, YouTube, and Gmail.
Tag Installation for New Customer Acquisition
For the system to know whether or now a user is new, there are three things taken into consideration:
- Google’s Native Data: uses a 540 day lookback window based on its own data. This will automatically happen when the NCA Goal is chosen.
- Self-Reported Data: Advertisers can tag new customers with a combination of the Global Site Tag and new customer parameters.
- First-Party List: Advertisers can upload their customer list to Google Ads
Google recommends advertisers utilize all three for the highest possible accuracy.
The new customer parameter is implemented in the following way:
The new tag can also be set up for App campaigns, via Firebase.
Calculating Total Conversion
The value of a new customer is used in tandem with the purchase value to determine the Total Conversion Value. This value will will be used in determining bidding, and input when you set up your Campaign.
Since the bid strategy of Smart Shopping Campaigns is to maximize conversion value, it will rely on the Total Conversion Value you calculate.
Here is an example of how to do it:
How It’s Set Up in Google Ads
In the Conversion goals section of your campaign, there will be a new option for “New customer acquisition.” This should be selected, and there will be a blank spot for you to enter the value amount you calculated for Total Conversion Value.
You can only assign one global value for the effort, and it will apply to all Smart Shopping Campaigns where this new goal type is utilized.
Related: A Beginner’s Guide to Shopping Ads
Lifetime Value Tag Addition in the Future
Google does note that in the future there will also be a tag parameter that can be implemented for users who want to measure lifetime value dynamically based on custom criteria.
This data will be reported on within a Lifetime Value column, and can be then used for bidding optimization.
This is the information on that future tag:
How to Access the Beta
As this is currently in beta, advertisers should contact their Google representative for access to be whitelisted.
Image credits: Google
