• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, June 7, 2017

Marketers can now target individual consumers in Google search queries even when they don't have the correct email address in their customer database using Google Customer Match and a LiveRamp extension. 

LiveRamp, an Acxiom company, has launched the addition of targeting for people-based search to its IdentityLink platform, and now can match the identity of a consumer when the brand's identifier doesn't match Google's in search queries.

Using LiveRamp's Google Customer Match extension, brands and their agency partners can build audiences and target across Google Search, YouTube, and Gmail, according to Pat Hayden, director of paid search at Elite SEM, which has been in talks with LiveRamp and brands to implement the feature.

Since the rollout of Google Customer Match, Hayden said, retailers have seen improvements in efficiency gains of between 20% and 40% when it comes to targeting. The ability to integrate the LiveRamp extension should improve those gains, he said.

Hayden said the first step is to pull out information from the brand's CRM platform such as email addresses, even if they are incomplete or old, as well as phone numbers and physical addresses. The idea is to piece the information together through LiveRamp to try and match-back a more accurate email or Gmail address. Once that matching happens, Elite SEM or any agency can leverage a direct API integration through LiveRamp into Google.

"I have four email addresses, for example, and if you can't link together all of those email addresses for me, you cannot make the connection," said Jeff Smith, LiveRamp chief marketing officer.

In early tests over at LiveRamp, marketers starting with customer files that do not have the correct address have managed to target up to six times the number of people in search.

The company boasts an increase in return on investment, lifting click-through rates (CTR) an average of between 2% and 3% and improving return on ad spend (ROAS) by nearly 70%.

For marketers who have a lot of email address and pair the feature with Google Customer Match, the percentage averages about 50%.