Google Ads now takes raw IP addresses in Customer Match. Europe is left out

Google has updated its Customer Match documentation to accept two new columns in an uploaded file: a user’s IP address and the timestamp of the interaction. Both go up unhashed. The upload format now runs to eight columns. Search Engine Land reported the interface change on 25 September.

A list can now be nothing but IP addresses

Advertisers could already match on email, phone number, postal address and mobile device ID. IPv4 and IPv6 both go in as plain strings. Google says the address should be the one captured at the moment of the interaction.

The timestamp does real work here. Without it, Google assigns the address to the latest known user of that IP. Addresses move between households, so a file with no timestamps can attach a customer record to somebody who simply inherited the connection.

Thirty EEA states plus the UK and Switzerland are excluded

Google’s documentation states that IP matching is not supported for end users located in the EEA, the UK or Switzerland. That is 32 territories. An advertiser in Warsaw or Madrid cannot use this for its home market, and has to strip those users out of the file before uploading.

The obligations do not stop there. Advertisers still owe their customers disclosure and consent for the data they hand over.

The API accepted IP addresses back in May

Data Manager API version 1.7 added IP ingestion on 28 May 2026. The file upload screen is the part that caught up this month, which is why the change surfaced now rather than in spring.

Google has been reworking how it counts and matches for a while. In recent months it shipped a measurement update built around data strength, while rivals build their own audience plumbing, such as Walmart opening Scintilla to marketers. On the buy side, Microsoft Curate added Copilot to private deals.

Two things change on the day you next upload a list. Your file can carry eight columns instead of six, and every European row has to come out first. If your CRM export does not tag customers by country, that filtering job is the work to schedule before anyone touches the new fields.