Google is giving businesses a new way to reach people while they decide where to go, with an advertising setting that prioritizes potential customers using Maps, Waze and local Search.
Called Local Customer Optimization, the feature sits inside Performance Max campaigns for store goals. Google Ads liaison Ginny Marvin announced the update alongside an easier way for eligible advertisers to feed purchases from physical stores into Google Ads.
Together, the changes show where Google is taking its local advertising pitch: reaching someone around the moment they choose a destination, then connecting advertising activity to money spent inside the business.
According to Google’s documentation, the new setting prioritizes people close to, or interested in, a business’s area who appear ready to act immediately. That includes people planning trips, navigating or looking for a local service. The goals can include visits, calls, directions and store sales.
Maps and Waze already form part of Performance Max’s store advertising options. On Waze, for example, a business can appear as a branded pin along a driving route, with location details and directions available when someone taps it. The new setting adds a specific budget priority for immediate local demand within that existing system.
For a restaurant or retailer, the potential attraction is timing: reaching someone who is already considering a nearby stop.
There are restrictions on which campaigns can use it. Local Customer Optimization requires offline goals and is incompatible with campaigns advertising products from a linked Merchant Center account. A retailer using that setup would need a separate eligible campaign to try the feature. Adding an online conversion goal also requires switching the setting off. Google explains the campaign restrictions here.
The second update addresses what happens after someone walks through the door.
Google says Store Sales in Data Manager will let eligible advertisers connect a CRM or Google Sheets directly to their advertising account, reducing the work needed to supply transaction data. Marvin’s announcement describes the local optimization rollout as underway globally, with the Data Manager integration due at the end of September.
Access to that measurement remains a significant qualification. Google’s published Store Sales requirements include account approval and, for sales counts and default value reporting, approximately 300,000 store visits and more than 500,000 account-level ad interactions over the preceding 90 days.
Manual reporting of transaction-based sales values carries additional requirements, including at least 30,000 uploaded transactions within 90 days and regular uploads of more than 10,000 new transactions from the past 30 days.
Those are existing measurement requirements; Google has not announced their removal alongside the simpler connection process. They apply to Store Sales reporting, separately from the Local Customer Optimization setting.
Photo credit: Mika Baumeister / Unsplash.
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