Google's Customer Match and Universal App Campaigns bring closely-targeted mobile ads

Google is making it easier for advertizers to very closely target mobile users, homing in on the 'moments that matter'. The company is launching two new ad products -- Customer Match and Universal App Campaigns -- in a bid to convert more views into sales.

The aim with Customer Match is to target people with ads based on what they are doing, where they are, and the device they are using. It ties in with searches, Gmail, and YouTube to enable businesses to create highly tailored ad campaigns. Universal App Campaigns helps advertisers gain greater reach across the Google network.

From a privacy point of view, Customer Match is likely to raise a few eyebrows. Google says that advertisers can upload a list of email addresses, and then campaigns and ads can be specifically designed to reach to signed-in users on Google from that list. It enables advertizers to essentially follow customers wherever they go and fire ads at them. It is a system that's very similar to that used by Facebook to capture the views of social network users.

Universal App Campaigns are an extension of AdWords that make it possible to promote apps through a range of Google services:

Let’s say you’ve built an adventure game. With Universal App Campaigns, you have unparalleled reach: you can drive installs on YouTube, the platform with 1B+ users who watch hundreds of millions of hours of content everyday. Your ads can also reach specific audiences across 650K apps and 2M+ websites in the GDN. And importantly, Universal App Campaigns tap into intent-rich searches like "adventure games" and "puzzle games" that are happening throughout the day on Google Search and Google Play so your app can be seen when people are looking to download something new.