Google Ads adds new customer reporting that does not touch bidding
Google Ads added an option in its Customer Acquisition settings: report on the new customers you acquire without touching the bid strategy at all. It unlocks the new customers and new customer value columns. The 0.01 workaround advertisers have used for years is no longer needed.
You no longer have to break bidding to measure
Per a Search Engine Land report dated August 7, 2026, a report on new customers acquired option started appearing in the Customer Acquisition settings of Google Ads. The option makes it possible to measure new customer performance while applying no adjustment on the bidding side.
The situation until now was this: the route to seeing new customer data ran through enabling bid higher for new customers. When advertisers wanted it purely for measurement they set the extra value to a symbolic figure such as 0.01. Technically the bid was modified, but in practice the effect was negligible.
The new option makes that unofficial method unnecessary. Per the report, the change was first spotted and shared on LinkedIn by paid search expert Thomas Eccel. The article contains no direct statement from Google.
Which columns it unlocks
With the option enabled, the new customers and new customer value columns become available in reporting. That makes the share of new customer acquisition inside overall campaign performance directly visible.
The value of the distinction is on the measurement side. How much of a campaign conversions come from existing customers versus new ones can require you to judge two campaigns with identical conversion totals very differently.
The article does not state which campaign types support the feature. We do not add scope information that is not in the source either, so the practical step is to check your own Customer Acquisition settings to see whether it appears.
The source also contains no official Google announcement or a timeline for wider availability. This is a setting that has started appearing in accounts, and whether it has fully rolled out is not clarified in the report.
Splitting measurement from optimization is small but correct
The change is technically small, but conceptually it lands in the right place. When measuring and steering hang off the same switch, you have to change the system in order to learn something, and that contaminates what you learn. That assessment is ours.
Second, how widespread the 0.01 workaround became was feedback in itself. When advertisers use a setting outside its purpose to meet a need, a feature is missing. Workarounds like that being answered on the product side is a good sign.
Third, the strategic value of separating new customers. The cost of winning a new customer and the cost of selling again to an existing one are not the same. Seeing both inside a single conversion figure hides where the budget is going.
Fourth, the distinction only means something if the data foundation is sound. The definition of a new customer rests on your conversion tracking setup, and if customer lists and conversion signals are not wired correctly these columns can mislead. That note is ours.
What it means for businesses in Türkiye
The assessment below is not in the source, it is our reading. The report contains no Türkiye specific note.
The gap we see most often in the Google Ads reporting of ecommerce and service businesses here is conversions being read as a single pile. If one of two campaigns that each produced 100 conversions in a month draws almost entirely on existing customers, that campaign is doing reminding rather than growth. Without that distinction budget drifts to the wrong campaign.
The second point is sector specific. In categories with high repeat purchase, such as cosmetics, supplements, pet products and stationery, existing customer conversions inflate the total easily. The new customer column is the most practical way to see real growth there.
Three practical steps. First, check whether the option appears in your Customer Acquisition settings. Second, before enabling it make sure your conversion tracking and customer lists are healthy, since these columns feed from there. Third, once enabled, re-rank your campaigns by new customer share rather than total conversions. In most accounts the ranking changes.
The UNALSOFT take
On the advertising management side we treat settings like this as a question rather than a feature: is this campaign bringing the business new customers, or collecting orders that were coming anyway? The answer changes budget allocation directly, and in most accounts it never gets asked. Splitting measurement from bidding means not having to break the system in order to learn the answer. That is the order we work in: measure first, decide second, touch bids last. Every bid change made without measurement is a guess.
Sources
Search Engine Land, Google Ads adds dedicated reporting for new customer acquisition
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