Google Ads has introduced a new reporting option that gives advertisers a clearer view of how many new customers their campaigns generate without requiring them to change their bidding strategy.
The new ‘Report on new customers acquired’ option sits within Google Ads’ Customer Acquisition settings and separates new customer measurement from campaign optimisation.
Until now, advertisers who wanted this level of reporting often had to use a workaround that technically affected bidding, even when they simply wanted access to the data.
The update should make it easier to understand whether your Google Ads campaigns attract genuinely new customers or rely heavily on people who already know and buy from your business.
What Has Google Changed in Google Ads?
Google has added a third option to its Customer Acquisition settings.
Advertisers can now select ‘Report on new customers acquired’ to access new customer performance data without telling Google Ads to adjust bids towards those users.
When enabled, advertisers can access reporting such as the number of new customers generated and the associated customer value.
Search Engine Land reported the update on 7 August 2026, highlighting that it replaces a workaround previously used by advertisers who wanted the reporting without meaningfully changing bidding behaviour.
This creates a clearer distinction between two important PPC activities:
Measurement: understanding which customers your advertising generates.
Optimisation: telling Google which customers it should prioritise when spending your budget.
Advertisers can now measure first and decide how they want to optimise afterwards.
How Did New Customer Reporting Work Before?
Google Ads already offers Customer Acquisition settings designed to help businesses prioritise new customers.
Advertisers can instruct Google to bid more aggressively for new customers or focus primarily on acquiring customers who have not purchased before. Google currently supports new customer acquisition goals across campaign types including Search, Performance Max and Demand Gen.
The problem arose when an advertiser wanted the reporting but did not want to alter their bidding.
A commonly used workaround involved selecting the option to bid higher for new customers and assigning them a tiny additional value, such as 0.01.
This effectively unlocked the reporting while creating virtually no meaningful bidding advantage. It worked, but it was hardly an ideal way to access important campaign information. The new option removes that extra step.
Why Does New Customer Acquisition Data Matter?
A campaign can generate impressive revenue figures without necessarily bringing significant numbers of new customers into your business.
Imagine two campaigns each produce £20,000 in sales.
One generates most of that revenue from existing customers while the other brings hundreds of completely new customers into the business.
Both campaigns have value, but they serve different commercial purposes. Understanding that difference can help you assess the real role paid advertising plays within your wider growth strategy.
Google’s lifecycle reporting can already provide metrics including new customers, customer acquisition cost and new customer lifetime value when the appropriate lifecycle goals and purchase tracking are configured.
This gives businesses another layer of information beyond clicks, conversions and headline ROAS.
Could This Give You a More Accurate Picture of PPC Performance?
Yes, particularly if customer acquisition represents one of your main Google Ads objectives.
Return on ad spend remains an important metric, but it cannot always tell you the full story. A strong campaign should support the commercial objective behind your advertising.
For some businesses, that means maximising immediate ecommerce revenue. For others, attracting new customers may carry greater long-term value because those customers could make repeat purchases over several months or years.
Knowing how many genuinely new customers your campaigns generate can therefore help you evaluate performance against customer acquisition cost, customer lifetime value and overall profitability.
Google also uses several methods to distinguish new and existing customers, including Google auto-detection, Customer Match data and conversion tracking information. Google notes that its automatic detection can use up to 540 days of tracked purchase activity, although businesses can provide their own customer data to improve segmentation.
Better data should lead to better decisions about where your advertising budget goes.
Does This Mean You Should Prioritise New Customers?
Not automatically, new customer acquisition matters, but existing customers can also generate substantial revenue and often convert more efficiently, the right strategy depends on your business model, margins, repeat purchase rate and growth objectives.
An established ecommerce business may want to understand whether paid advertising expands its customer base rather than simply capturing existing demand.
A business focused on immediate profitability may prefer campaigns that deliver the strongest overall return regardless of whether the customer is new or returning.
The advantage of Google’s latest update is that you can collect the information without immediately committing your campaign to a new bidding strategy.
You can analyse the data first, then you can decide whether prioritising new customers makes commercial sense.
What Should Advertisers Do Next?
If you run Google Ads campaigns that generate online purchases, review your Customer Acquisition settings and the quality of the data feeding your account.
Make sure your purchase conversion tracking works correctly and check whether Google can accurately distinguish between new and returning customers.
Google states that lifecycle reporting focuses on purchase conversions and recommends supplying additional customer information where possible to improve reporting accuracy.
From there, compare new customer performance against your wider campaign metrics, look beyond the number of conversions.
Consider how much you spend to acquire each customer, what those customers buy and how valuable they could become over time.
That commercial context matters far more than activating another Google Ads setting and hoping performance improves.
What Does the Update Mean for Your Google Ads Strategy?
Google continues to give advertisers more ways to understand customer value rather than measuring campaigns purely through clicks and individual conversions.
Dedicated new customer reporting is another useful step in that direction, for advertisers, the biggest benefit is control.
You can now analyse new customer acquisition separately without allowing the reporting setting itself to influence bidding.
That gives you clearer information before making decisions about budgets, bidding and campaign structure.
At Outrank, we manage PPC around the results that matter to your business. That means looking beyond traffic and headline conversion figures to understand customer acquisition, revenue, return on ad spend and where your budget can generate the strongest commercial return.
Our work with Promain, for example, helped increase Google Ads revenue by 175%, improve ROAS by 346% and reduce overall Google Ads spend by 20% by focusing budget on stronger commercial opportunities.
Could Your Google Ads Campaigns Deliver More?
More reporting does not automatically mean better performance, knowing which numbers matter and acting on them does.
If you want to understand whether your Google Ads campaigns attract new customers, where your budget gets wasted and which campaigns drive meaningful business growth, speak to Outrank.
Our paid media team builds and manages Google Ads campaigns around qualified leads, sales, customer acquisition and measurable return rather than clicks alone.
Speak to Outrank today and find out how we can make your Google Ads budget work harder for your business.