Troubleshooting the new customer acquisition goal

If your campaign isn’t optimizing to acquire new customers, here are a few common scenarios you may encounter and steps to troubleshoot.

On this page

• Lower than expected performance
• High proportion of returning customers
• High proportion of unknown customers

Lower than expected performance

Occasionally, Performance Max or Search campaigns using the new customer acquisition goal may serve fewer ads than expected. This may be due to incorrect campaign setup. Follow the steps below to troubleshoot.

Step 1 of 3: Confirm your campaign settings

1. Go to  Campaigns  within the  Campaignsmenu .
2. On the “Campaigns” page, find the Performance Max or Search campaign that you want to edit.
3. Select the gear iconbeside the campaign name to open the “Settings” panel.
4. Expand the “Customer acquisition” section, and confirm that “Only bid for new customers” is checked.
5. Expand the “Customer acquisition” section, and confirm that:
   • The “Adjust your bidding to help you gain new customers” box is checked.
   • If you’ve selected to “Only bid for new customers” and are concerned about your performance not being optimized, we recommend to instead select “Bid higher for new customers (recommended)” as this will not limit the reach of your campaign.
   • If you’re concerned about your performance optimization after selecting “Only bid for new customers”, consider choosing “Bid higher for new customers (recommended)”. Bidding higher for new customers won’t limit the reach of your campaign.

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Step 2 of 3: Confirm your conversion settings

1. Go to  Summary  within the  Goalsmenu .
2. For non-retail advertisers, confirm that the purchase conversions listed are within the last 30 days or have an existing customer user list added. You must use either of these options to enable a new customer acquisition goal.
3. If your new customer acquisition goal has been set up correctly, confirm when it was added to the campaign.
   • Performance Max and Search campaigns need 1-2 weeks to adjust to any significant changes made to a campaign. Your campaign may take time to adjust to this new targeting and optimization setting.
4. If there are no issues with setup, confirm that the Search campaign , Performance Max campaign , or Demand Gen campaign has been set up correctly.

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Step 3 of 3: Check your customer list match rates

In order for the NCA goal to be as accurate as possible when detecting new vs. existing customers, we recommend that advertisers use first-party data to supplement autodetection and the new vs existing customer parameter in your conversion tracking tag.

For advertisers that opt to use first in their NCA campaigns, Customer Match is one of the methods to provide a 1PD customer list. When advertisers use Customer Match, we want them to provide the best data to ensure we have high Match Rates to ensure that we are as accurate as possible when detecting if a user is new or existing. Match rate is defined as % of people matched across your first-party Customer Match list and Google users, after filtering out opted out users. You can check your advertisers's Customer Match match rates directly in Google Ads audience manager or in Google Ads Data Manager (by adding in the match rate column)

To bolster match rate, we suggest you follow best practices of supplying multiple match keys - including multiple email addresses (if applicable), phone number and zip code.

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High proportion of returning, unknown, or additional conversions

High volume of returning conversions

Causes:

• If you’re using our New Customer Value Mode, your new customer value adjustment may not be high enough.
• If you’re using New Customer Only Mode, it’s possible that a percentage of your traffic may still be from returning customers. This may happen in instances when it was uncertain whether the customer was new or returning when the ad was served. This can be caused by technical limitations due to Apple’s ITP and ATT policies. We recommend implementing all the best practices below to ensure the most accurate new customer detection.
• If you’ve implemented new customer acquisition reporting in the Google tag incorrectly, then you may find a high volume of returning conversions.

What to do:

• To bid more competitively for new customers, increase the new customer value adjustment.
• If you haven’t already, we strongly recommend implementing durable first-party data with Customer Match lists for the most durable and accurate new customer detection. Customer Match lists supplement tag and SDK based user lists with first-party customer data, which we use to match against Google users. Using a combination of both list types will provide the best coverage for reaching your desired customer segments.
• Ensure your customer lists are complete and up to date and refreshed frequently. If you’re using Customer Match, learn how to improve your match rate .
• We recommend setting up new customer acquisition reporting in the Google tag for the most accurate reporting. Doing so provides ground truth data to Google which acts as a feedback loop to improve our new customer detection model.
• Finally, if you have already set up new customer acquisition reporting in the Google tag double check your setup to ensure it accurately reflects new vs. returning customers.

High volume of unknown or additional conversions

Causes:

• Lifecycle goal reporting is limited to Purchase conversions. Non-purchase conversions will automatically be classified as Additional conversions in reporting.
• Conversion data prior to enabling lifecycle goals is categorized as Unknown.
• Prior to October 2025, some purchase conversions were labeled Unknown because of technical limitations or user personalization settings.  
• Conversions that come from offers that are in sensitive interest categories are classified as unknown in reporting.

What to do:

• Check your date range to ensure you are only viewing reporting from after you implemented lifecycle goals.
• If the issue is caused by non-purchase conversions, no action is needed. For campaigns with customer lifecycle goals that optimize for non-purchase conversion goals, these will be reported as Additional conversions.