Google in the coming weeks will launch several features that help marketers to acquire new customers.

The features in Google’s automated Performance Max platform support advertisers that are looking to generate leads or increase online sales focus on acquiring new customers, better understand performance and upgrade from Smart Shopping campaigns to Performance Max in one click.

Performance Max works to unlock additional ad inventory across Search, YouTube, Shopping, Display, Discover, Gmail, and Maps.

The consumer acquisition goal was previously available for retailers using Smart Shopping campaigns.

Now Google will expand it to more advertiser goals in Performance Max, which optimizes results based on conversion goals and looks for the highest return on investment conversions, regardless of the channel.

This will allow marketers to either bid more for new customers compared to existing customers, or to focus optimization goals on only new customers while maintaining costs.

Google provided the following example in the announcement. Online travel company Luxury Escapes, an early adopter of the feature, wanted to grow online sales for its travel packages, with separate targets for new and returning customers. Luxury Escapes launched a test with the new customer acquisition goal in Performance Max, choosing to optimize for only new customers.

Following the test, the company saw a 45% increase in new customer revenue with a 21% increase in ROAS compared with its Performance Max campaign that did not use the new customer acquisition goal.

Advertisers also will have additional ways to identify new customers when providing their first-party data through Customer Match lists, setting up conversion tags and using Google’s autodetection method. 

Two new “insights” for Performance Max campaigns include Asset Audience, which will help advertisers attain a better understanding of how their text, image and video assets resonate with specific customer segments, and Diagnostic, which will provide advertisers with a snapshot of outstanding setup issues that may prevent ads from serving.

In the coming weeks, Google will roll out consumer interest insights for Performance Max to all advertisers to help uncover search themes.