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This is nothing new as FB has had Custom Audiences available for a while now, and you could also do this with 3rd party audience lists via cookie onboarding ser

This is nothing new as FB has had Custom Audiences available for a while now, and you could also do this with 3rd party audience lists via cookie onboarding services like LiveRamp, etc. What I'm wondering here is if Google will provide any way to upload this info to them anonymously similar to how Liveramp does it. I personally won't be running these, but I'm curious if others are really comfortable with the idea of uploading their customer lists to Google (or FB or anyone else for that matter) in plaintext vs. going through a neutral middle-man that lets you just provide hashed values to get a match. EDIT: Looks like my reading comprehension failed this morning and they do allow you to upload hashed lists per their support doc. Also, to clarify, I have little doubt that Google, FB, etc. can't figure out who the people are. The main concern is with the people managing the AdWords accounts pulling/sending around plaintext email lists of all these customer records. That is often extremely sensitive and valuable company data that should never be sent around like that. From my experience, the people managing these campaigns are often not technical or experienced enough to think of risks like that. So hopefully the only way they can access such info is via someone who does have the knowledge/experience to say "yeah, plaintext lists of our customer emails are NOT something I'm going to be sending you a CSV of."

the_watcher 11y ago
People send around plaintext files of email addresses all the time. Every single CRM, marketing automation, and ESP make it very easy to do so, and there are hundreds of reasons why you might.
magicalist 11y ago
> I personally won't be running these, but I'm curious if others are really comfortable with the idea of uploading their customer lists to Google (or FB or anyone else for that matter) in plaintext vs. going through a neutral middle-man that lets you just provide hashed values to get a match. according to the linked [1] you only upload hashes of email addresses. [1] https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/6276125 https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/6276125
- vomitcuddle 11y ago
  nothing stopping them from storing precomputed hashes for every registered gmail address and using them as a lookup table
  - eli 11y ago
    If you don't want Google matching your customer list to individual gmail accounts for targeting, then this service isn't for you. That's kinda the whole point.
- shostack 11y ago
  Wow, clearly I haven't had enough caffeine yet to even read the support page, thanks for the kind reminder ;)
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  Well, Google still knows your customers, then.
on_ 11y ago
> if others are really comfortable with the idea of uploading their customer lists to Google (or FB [)] Just to present a cynical point of view, it is Facebook and Google. In America (and many other countries) Google provides mail servers via google apps or just directly on the gmail platform. I don't know the percentage so I won't invent one but I would argue it is quite likely that if an exchange takes place between 2 parties (the minimum for a convo) the traffic routes through google. Between facebook, chrome, gmail and android your customer lists are likely not private.

the_watcher 11y ago

People send around plaintext files of email addresses all the time. Every single CRM, marketing automation, and ESP make it very easy to do so, and there are hundreds of reasons why you might.

magicalist 11y ago

> I personally won't be running these, but I'm curious if others are really comfortable with the idea of uploading their customer lists to Google (or FB or anyone else for that matter) in plaintext vs. going through a neutral middle-man that lets you just provide hashed values to get a match. according to the linked [1] you only upload hashes of email addresses. [1] https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/6276125 https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/6276125

vomitcuddle 11y ago
nothing stopping them from storing precomputed hashes for every registered gmail address and using them as a lookup table
- eli 11y ago
  If you don't want Google matching your customer list to individual gmail accounts for targeting, then this service isn't for you. That's kinda the whole point.
shostack 11y ago
Wow, clearly I haven't had enough caffeine yet to even read the support page, thanks for the kind reminder ;)
TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
Well, Google still knows your customers, then.

on_ 11y ago

> if others are really comfortable with the idea of uploading their customer lists to Google (or FB [)] Just to present a cynical point of view, it is Facebook and Google. In America (and many other countries) Google provides mail servers via google apps or just directly on the gmail platform. I don't know the percentage so I won't invent one but I would argue it is quite likely that if an exchange takes place between 2 parties (the minimum for a convo) the traffic routes through google. Between facebook, chrome, gmail and android your customer lists are likely not private.