Google Ads expands retention goals, adds percentage multipliers

Google is rolling out three changes to customer lifecycle goals in Google Ads this month. New Customer High Value Mode is coming to Shopping campaigns, customer retention goals are expanding to Performance Max, Search and Shopping after betas, and percentage multipliers let bids scale with the size of the shopping cart instead of adding a flat dollar amount.

Google announced the updates on 22 October and framed them around the holiday trading period. The common thread is a question most accounts never answer explicitly: which customers are worth paying more to reach, and which ones the campaign should leave alone.

Shopping adds High Value Mode

New Customer High Value Mode has been available in Search and Performance Max for a while. Google says advertisers have used it to bid more aggressively for new customers who are likely to spend more, while keeping their normal reach for everyone else.

The change this month extends the mode to Shopping campaigns. In Google's own summary table it sits under acquisition: the audience is high-value prospects, the mechanism is a higher bid on people with a higher chance of spending more, and normal reach is maintained.

For a retailer that has kept standard Shopping campaigns running alongside, or instead of, Performance Max, the gap was narrower than it looks. Shopping could already bid higher for new customers. What it lacked was the high-value tier, so Shopping and Performance Max now offer the same acquisition settings.

Which customers does Retention Only Mode actually reach?

Google says the retention goals have come through successful betas and are now being made available more broadly. They come in three modes.

• Re-engagement Mode tells the campaign to prioritise customers who have not placed an order in a while, while still showing ads to the main target audience.
• Loyalty Mode is for members of a loyalty program. Google describes it as a way to show member-only pricing or messages written for people who already belong to the brand's community.
• Retention Only Mode runs a campaign that is fully dedicated to retention, reaching only the customer segments the advertiser specifies. Google's table describes it as restricting targeting to high-value customers and focusing only on existing ones.

Performance Max, Search and Shopping campaigns get the retention goals this month. Demand Gen is not on that list.

At least one advertiser spotted the setting the day after the announcement. A screenshot shared on 23 October shows a "Customer retention" setting that, once on, points Smart Bidding at the customer types the advertiser picks, with Existing, High-value and Lapsed as the options, and a note that ads may still reach other people because of privacy limits. Treat the exact labels as early evidence rather than final documentation.

Google's own announcement makes a point that matters here: not every customer carries the same value, and customers do not all appear the same way in a CRM. The modes can only act on segments the account can see.

Percentage multipliers scale the boost with cart size

The third change is percentage multipliers, now rolling out of beta. Until now, the boost an advertiser could apply for a new or returning customer was a flat dollar amount added to the conversion value.

Google's Ads Liaison account put the problem plainly: "A static $20 incremental conversion value set on a small $50 checkout might be too aggressive, but not aggressive enough on a large $1,000 cart."

With a percentage multiplier the boost moves with the order. Google's example is a jewellery shop that sets a 20 per cent boost, or 1.2x, so the campaign bids just as hard for a $500 cart as for a $50 one, in proportion.

This one reaches all four campaign types this month, with Demand Gen joining Search, Shopping and Performance Max, and it works in Search Ads 360 as well as Google Ads. Google's table lists this one under control, applied to everyone, with bids set dynamically on the potential order value.

The multiplier changes what a conversion is worth, which fits where Google has been moving for some time. Our look at device bid adjustments found they no longer steer bids the way they used to under Smart Bidding. Google's help notes that Target CPA treats a device adjustment as a change to the CPA target rather than the bid, so the levers that matter most are the ones that change the value of a conversion.

Lists stale for six months

Every one of these modes depends on the account knowing who is new, who is lapsed, who is a loyalty member and what an order is worth. Before switching anything on, three things need to be in place.

• Customer lists that are uploaded, current and segmented the way the modes expect: existing customers at minimum, a lapsed-customer list if Re-engagement Mode is the goal, and a loyalty list if Loyalty Mode is the goal.
• Conversion values that reflect real order value. A percentage multiplier scales the value of the cart, so if every purchase is recorded at the same fixed value there is nothing for it to scale.
• A definition of new versus existing that the business agrees with. If the list is six months stale, "new" customers can include people who bought in winter, especially in store or through channels the Google Ads tag never saw. Google's own detection from tracked purchases fills some of the gap, but the retention modes depend on the lists.

Lead generation advertisers should read the announcement carefully before copying a retail setup. Google's examples are carts and orders, and the announcement gives no lead-gen example, so an account that only records form fills at one fixed value has little for the modes to work with. Performance Max can deliver in lead-gen accounts, as our lifetime comparison of Performance Max cost per lead against Search in one account showed, but it does so on the conversion data it is given.

Setting sighted in-account, Australian date missing like Universal Cart

The announcement was published on Google's US business site and gives no list of countries. An in-account sighting of the new retention setting was shared the day after. Google says all three features are rolling out this month, and rollouts described that way usually arrive in stages, so an Australian account may show one setting before another.

That is the same pattern as the Universal Cart launch, which is live in the US with no Australian date. The practical answer is to open the campaign settings and look, rather than assume.

Re-engagement Mode first, in one Shopping or Performance Max campaign, before Black Friday

The temptation before Black Friday is to turn on everything Google offers. A safer sequence looks like this.

1. Confirm customer lists and conversion values are flowing into the account, and that the new versus existing split in reporting looks right.
2. Pick one campaign with enough conversions to read a result, and one goal. Re-engagement Mode in a Shopping or Performance Max campaign is the lowest-risk start because the main audience keeps running. It needs a Purchase conversion goal, the New Customer Value acquisition setting switched on, a Customer Match list of lapsed customers and value-based bidding (Target ROAS or Maximise conversion value). Google's help lists it for Performance Max now, with Shopping to follow, so it may reach Performance Max first in an Australian account.
3. If using a percentage multiplier, start modest. Google's own example is 20 per cent.
4. Keep Retention Only Mode for a separate campaign with its own budget, so retention spend never competes with acquisition inside the same campaign.
5. Watch new customer share and average order value for a couple of weeks before extending the setting to other campaigns.

Peak season is a bad time to discover a customer list was stale. Check the data before the sales start, then decide which customers are worth paying more for.