Google's help page trails its retention goal rollout to Search and Shopping – PPC Land

Re-engagement still shows as Performance Max only in Google Ads documentation, three days after Google's holiday post. Which campaign types can use each mode?
Google published a post on its Accelerate with Google site on October 22, 2026, setting out three changes to customer lifecycle goals in Google Ads ahead of the holiday season: New Customer High Value Mode for Shopping campaigns, a wider rollout of retention goals, and percentage multipliers for bid adjustments. The post, titled “Three updates to customer lifecycle goals to help you win the holiday season,” was first spotted by PPC News Feed, which wrote it up on October 24. Three days after publication, the Google Ads Help Center article on customer lifecycle goals still lists Re-engagement as available in Performance Max only, does not list Shopping for high-value new customers, and makes no mention of either Retention Only Mode or percentage multipliers.
Google lets advertisers tell its ad system to chase new customers, or to win back old ones, and on October 22 it said those settings are spreading to more types of campaigns. Its official help page, which advertisers use to check what works where, has not caught up and still describes the older, narrower set-up. Anyone planning holiday campaigns is looking at two Google documents that give different answers about which campaigns can use which setting.
The post carries no byline. Page metadata gives a publication time of 04:48 on October 22, 2026, with a modification less than an hour later. It opens with a seasonal framing. “In this holiday season, shoppers are constantly streaming, scrolling, shopping and searching,” according to Google, which “makes it challenging to meet your campaign goals if you can’t distinguish between new and existing customers.” The company said it was “introducing more precise ways to express how campaigns should acquire and re-engage customers across Performance Max, Shopping, Search, Demand Gen campaigns.”
PPC Land reported the same three changes on October 22 from a thread posted by AdsLiaison, Google’s ads product liaison account on X, and from a Search Engine Land article, in coverage of the 1.1x to 5x multiplier range. That earlier report did not have Google’s own post. Reading the post now settles several points the October 22 coverage left open, and raises a few new ones.
The first update extends New Customer High Value Mode, which lets advertisers bid more for new customers who are predicted to spend more, while still reaching ordinary new customers. “Since we launched New Customer High Value Mode for Search and Performance Max, advertisers have used it to bid strategically for high-value new customers while keeping their regular reach intact,” according to Google. “We’re excited to extend this capability to Shopping campaigns.” The post states that High Value Mode “is rolling out this month in Shopping Campaigns.”
That sentence answers a question PPC Land’s October 22 article could not. Search Engine Land had said the mode was previously introduced for Search and Performance Max; the AdsLiaison thread did not say so, and PPC Land’s April 2025 report on lifecycle goals listed High Value New Customer Mode as a Performance Max beta only. Google’s post confirms Search was already covered. It does not say when Search gained the mode.
The second update concerns existing customers. “Following successful betas, we’re making retention goals available more broadly across campaigns,” according to Google. The post describes three modes, and these descriptions, rather than the AdsLiaison thread, appear to be the source of the definitions Search Engine Land published on October 22.
Re-engagement Mode “allows your campaigns to prioritize customers that haven’t placed an order in a while, while still running your ads for your main target audience.” Loyalty Mode is “built to allow you to show member-only pricing, or specific messages that will resonate with people who are already part of your branded community.” Retention Only Mode “lets you run campaigns that are fully dedicated to customer retention, only reaching the key segments of your customer base that you specify.”
According to the post, “Customer Retention Goals are rolling out this month for Performance Max, Search and Shopping campaigns.” Demand Gen is not on that list.
The post does not say what “a while” means for Re-engagement. The Help Center fills part of that gap: advertisers define a lapsed customer “based on your unique business criteria, whether it’s a period of inactivity or a specific lack of engagement,” and upload those lists through Customer Match.
The third update is percentage multipliers. “With products that range in value, using a flat dollar boost for your bids might not always give you the right balance,” according to Google, which said it is “rolling out a new option from beta.” The post illustrates it with a fictional retailer: “Elea’s jewelry shop sets a 20% (1.2x) boost,” and its bids “will scale proportionately,” so that it can “bid just as aggressively for a $500 cart as they would for a $50 cart.”
Multipliers “will be rolling out this month for Search, Shopping, Performance Max, and Demand Gen in both Google Ads and SA360,” according to the post.
Two details differ from the AdsLiaison thread. The thread gave the permitted range, 1.1x to 5x, and described the rollout as global; the post gives neither. The thread’s worked example used $100 and $500 purchases scaling to $120 and $600, while the post uses $50 and $500 carts. The $50 and $500 pairing is the one Search Engine Land used, which suggests that article drew on the post rather than on the thread. Neither Google source contradicts the other on substance.
Under the heading “Putting these goals into action,” Google’s post includes a table matching each strategy to an audience, a method and a feature:
The Retention Only row describes the mode as restricting targeting “only to high-value customers.” The body of the same post says the mode reaches “the key segments of your customer base that you specify.” Those are not the same thing. In the Google Ads interface Vivek Gupta shared, a “Customer retention” setting marked new carries a checkbox reading “Adjust your bidding to help you re-engage existing, high-value, and lapsed customers,” followed by “Select which customer types you want to reach with this campaign” and three options: existing customers, high-value customers and lapsed customers. The interface suggests advertisers choose among three segments, which matches the body text rather than the table.
The same interface raises a separate question. The campaign shown has a conversion goal of “Submit lead forms” and a bidding strategy of “Maximize conversions,” with customer acquisition set to “Bid equally for new and existing customers.” Google’s Help Center lists only value-based strategies, Target ROAS and Maximize conversion value, as eligible for Re-engagement and for loyalty program members, and says at least one purchase conversion goal is required for Re-engagement. A lead form campaign on Maximize conversions sits outside both requirements. Google has not said whether the retention modes rolling out this month drop the value-based bidding requirement, or whether Retention Only Mode follows different rules from Re-engagement.
Google’s Help Center article “About customer lifecycle goals” contains a table of settings, eligible campaign types, bidding strategies and conversion requirements. On October 25, 2026, the US English version of the page listed the following:
Set against Google’s October 22 post, the page differs at four points:
The mismatch runs in the other direction too. The help page describes a High-value re-engagement setting, for customers “who previously drove high value to your business, from a high frequency of purchases, large basket size or high-value orders, but have since stopped engaging.” Google’s holiday post does not mention High-value re-engagement at all, and lists Retention Only Mode in the slot where a reader might expect it. Whether the two are the same feature under different names, or separate settings, is not stated in either document.
Help Center pages frequently lag rollouts, and “rolling out this month” leaves until October 31 for the changes to reach accounts. But the help page is the document that sets eligibility, and it is the one Google’s own post links to for both acquisition and retention.
The help page contains guidance the holiday post omits. Google recommends New customer value “for all advertisers with purchase conversion goals.” It describes New customer only as suited to advertisers with “strict budgets for customer acquisition, or have non-purchase conversion goals like lead generation,” and says those using it “should set up a separate campaign to reach existing customers.” It is the only setting in the table that works with cost-based strategies.
For High-value new customer, the help page offers one example of how an advertiser might define the segment: customers “who purchase twice as much product compared to others.”
Performance Max and Standard Shopping campaigns set to new customer acquisition can also be paired with first-order promotions created in Google Merchant Center, according to the help page. That pairing “is available only in the US,” and Google directs advertisers to their account managers for more information.
The October 22 changes arrive in the final weeks before Black Friday and Cyber Monday, when retailers typically lock campaign structures. An advertiser checking whether Search campaigns can run Re-engagement, or whether Shopping campaigns can use High Value Mode, gets one answer from Google’s marketing post and another from Google’s help documentation. The Google Ads interface itself is the third source, and it varies by account during a rollout.
The documentation question has a technical side. PPC Land reported in July that Google Ads API v25 removed the CustomerLifecycleGoal and CampaignLifecycleGoal resources, moving configuration to Goal and CampaignGoalConfig, and that v25 added a goal for retaining loyalty program members at campaign or account level. Teams managing lifecycle settings through the API or through Search Ads 360 depend on documented eligibility to know which combinations will be accepted.
There is also the question of what the modes change in the auction. Every acquisition and retention setting works by raising the conversion value Smart Bidding assigns to a chosen group, or by restricting who a campaign reaches. Retention Only Mode is in the second category: according to the interface Vivek Gupta shared, “Your campaign will be limited to only lapsed customers” when the restrictive option is selected. That makes it closer to New customer only than to the bid-higher modes, and it carries the same trade-off the help page spells out for New customer only: customers outside the chosen segments are excluded from that campaign.
The direction of travel is consistent with PPC Land’s earlier reporting. Google introduced the new customer acquisition goal for Performance Max in April 2022 with two modes. In April 2025 it added High Value New Customer Mode and two Win-Back betas, all in Performance Max. PPC Land’s August 2025 roundup reported high value mode reaching full availability in Performance Max that year. A loyalty retention goal for Performance Max and Standard Shopping appeared as an open beta in Google’s September 2025 Think Week announcements, which PPC Land covered in its November 2025 holiday guidance report, and Google extended loyalty program features to 14 countries in March 2026. The October 2026 post takes retention goals into Search campaigns for the first time, at least on paper.
Google’s post ends with a footnote: “Actual results will vary by advertiser.” It contains no performance figures from the betas it describes as successful.
Who: Google, through a post on its Accelerate with Google site, first spotted by PPC News Feed. The changes affect advertisers using customer acquisition and retention goals in Google Ads and Search Ads 360.
What: Google said New Customer High Value Mode is rolling out to Shopping, retention goals (Re-engagement, Loyalty and Retention Only modes) are rolling out to Performance Max, Search and Shopping, and percentage multipliers are leaving beta across four campaign types. Google’s Help Center page on lifecycle goals still lists the narrower, earlier availability and omits Retention Only Mode and multipliers.
When: The post was published on October 22, 2026, with all three rollouts scheduled for October. The help page was unchanged on October 25, 2026.
Where: Search, Shopping, Performance Max and Demand Gen campaigns in Google Ads and SA360, with retention modes limited to Performance Max, Search and Shopping. First-order promotions paired with acquisition goals are available only in the US.
Why: According to Google, holiday shoppers move across streaming, social, shopping and search, making it harder to separate new from existing customers. The documentation gap matters because advertisers setting up holiday campaigns rely on the help page to know which campaign types and bidding strategies qualify for each mode.
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