• by Laurie Sullivan , August 26, 2025

Loyalty, where consumers remain dedicated to a specific brand, took on a new meaning Tuesday when Google advanced personalized member-only pricing, shopping and shipping  benefits for retailers.

The updated service -- available in Performance Max and Shopping campaigns -- allows retailers to further personalize annotations in real-time just in time for the holidays.

“It highlights exclusive deals for loyal members,” Jyotika Prasad, senior director of retail ads at Google, told MediaPost. “It’s based on first-party data the retailer shares with us.”

The advanced feature in early tests allowed Sephora US to personalize annotations that showed signed-in shoppers specific discounts based on their loyalty tier. The test resulted in a 20% increase in click-through rates for personalized ads shown to loyal customers.

The loyalty goal feature in Google Ads, which helps retailers optimize budgets for their highest-value shoppers, enables brands and retailers to tailor their bids to drive higher lifetime value.

“This program works for any retailer with a loyalty program through first-party data,” Prasad said.

In 2024, Google began supporting creative with personalized price and shopping across its platforms based on first-time buyers and the shopper's relationship with a retailer.

That experience has been expanded today with a bundle designed to help advertisers convert one-time buyers with first-party data with Customer Match tools to tailor promotions and creative based on a shopper’s specific relationship with a brand.

When a retailer accesses Google’s Merchant Center and describes the program they want to run, Customer Match in ad tools gives Google insight into the retailer’s members through its first-party data.

Google identifies offers for the retailer’s customers in nanoseconds and turns the data into ads that serve online to the consumer in real-time.

The new bundle includes a loyalty mode in retention goal to identify loyal customers and create a tailored bidding strategy to maximize their lifetime value and Personalized Annotations on Performance Max Shopping campaigns to visually highlight exclusive deals for members, which is especially helpful to bring back customers who have lapsed.

Prasad agreed that the possibilities with loyalty services are endless, especially if Google begins looking at how large language models (LLMs) could support the program.

“When helping the retailer find new prospects, we would probably rely on AI intelligence in a privacy safe manner,” she said.