Confidential Matching

What Is Confidential Matching?

With the end of third-party cookies, Confidential Matching becomes increasingly important for advertisers who want to reach their audiences precisely while complying with strict privacy regulations. The technology connects your CRM data with Google’s user signals without either party seeing the other’s raw data. This keeps your ad performance high while remaining GDPR-compliant.

What Is Confidential Matching?

Confidential Matching is Google’s privacy-compliant approach to matching your first-party customer data with Google user data. The matching takes place in an encrypted Trusted Execution Environment where neither Google nor you can view the other party’s raw data. Only the matching result is output.

Confidential Matching is Google’s privacy-compliant approach to matching your first-party customer data with Google’s user data. The matching occurs in a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), an isolated and encrypted computing environment where neither Google nor you can see the raw data of the other side. Only the matching result is output.

Technically, Confidential Matching works as follows: you upload your customer data (e.g., email addresses) encrypted into the TEE. Google uploads its user data encrypted as well. Inside the TEE the records are matched, and the result is made available for campaign optimization. At no point does either party have access to the other’s raw data. This process is an evolution of classic Customer Match, where data is transmitted via hashing.

For advertisers, Confidential Matching offers an important advantage: you can use your valuable first-party data for campaign optimization without privacy concerns. The Google Ads Data Manager simplifies data import. Especially in the post-cookie era, Confidential Matching is becoming increasingly relevant, as it enables precise targeting without relying on third-party cookies.