Google Ads Adds Local Customer Optimization and Store Sales Import Ahead of the Holidays

Google Ads is rolling out two features aimed at multi-location retailers, restaurants and local service businesses, announced by Google Ads Liaison Ginny Marvin: Local Customer Optimization for Performance Max store goals campaigns, and a simpler way to bring offline store sales data into Google Ads through Data Manager.

What's rolling out

Local Customer Optimization is a new campaign-level toggle for Performance Max store goals campaigns. When enabled, it prioritises budget toward consumers who are actively in-market nearby, across Google Maps, Waze and local Search. It's rolling out now.

Store Sales in Data Manager lets advertisers connect a CRM or Google Sheets directly within Data Manager, rather than relying on more technically demanding integration methods, to feed offline sales data back into Google Ads for measurement and optimisation. Google says this is rolling out over the coming weeks.

The eligibility catch

Google's own Local Customer Optimization help page spells out a restriction worth knowing before you go looking for the toggle: it's only available on a Performance Max campaign that optimizes exclusively for offline goals — store visits, store sales, contacts, or directions — and it is explicitly not compatible with campaigns advertising products from a linked Merchant Center account, even if the toggle itself still appears enabled in the interface. Google's documentation states plainly: "Local customer optimization is not compatible with online campaign goals and Performance Max campaigns with products from Merchant Center."

In practice, that means most retailers running a single feed-based Performance Max campaign for both online sales and store visits won't be able to use this on their existing setup. Google needs a separate, store-goals-only Performance Max campaign with Merchant Center products deselected to make it eligible — an extra campaign to build and manage, not a setting you flip on inside what's already running.

Why it matters

The two features work at opposite ends of the same problem. Local Customer Optimization uses real-time navigation and local-intent signals to find nearby customers before they buy; Store Sales in Data Manager makes it easier to report back what actually happened in-store once they do. Together, they tighten the link between online discovery and offline revenue — useful for any multi-location business trying to prove ROI on Performance Max spend beyond click and conversion counts.

The timing, just ahead of the holiday shopping season, isn't a coincidence — this is exactly the kind of measurement gap that gets more painful once budgets scale up for Q4. For multi-location advertisers weighing whether the separate-campaign requirement is worth it, the calculation comes down to how much of your current in-store conversion volume Google's existing attribution already catches versus what a dedicated store-goals campaign, fed by better offline sales data, is likely to surface instead.

Sources

• Ginny Marvin on X — Local Customer Optimization announcement
• About Local customer optimization within Performance Max campaign for store goals — Google Ads Help — eligibility requirements and Merchant Center compatibility restriction