Customer Match disabled in Google Ads API | April 2026

Google has officially announced a shift in how audience data is handled. Starting from April 1, 2026, the Google Ads API will no longer support Customer Match uploads for developer tokens that have been inactive for more than 180 days (since October 2025).

This means if you try to refresh your Customer Match lists via Google Ads API from April 2026 using affected developer tokens (those that weren’t used since October 2025), your current automated workflows will likely return errors. Automated audience lists will stop updating, which means existing lists may quickly become outdated.

Google’s goal is to centralize and modernize how first-party data is ingested across its platforms. The Data Manager API should become a unified layer for sending first-party data to products like Google Ads, Google Analytics, and Display & Video 360.

Compared to the Google Ads API and other Google’s APIs, the Data Manager API has several improvements:

• Improved security. It has features like confidential matching and advanced encryption.
• A simpler developer workflow. With the Data Manager API, the process of uploading Customer Match data is easier - instead of managing multiple steps, developers can send the data through a single ingestion request.

Users also started receiving letters that the Partner Audience API is going to be deprecated in 2027. It's just one more reason to switch to the Data Manager API.

Firstly, check your token logs to see if your OfflineUserDataJobService or UserDataService has done a Customer Match upload within the last 180 days.

• If yes, you are "allowlisted" and can continue using the Google Ads API for now while you work on your migration to the Data Manager API.
• If no, your token will return a CUSTOMER_NOT_ALLOWLISTED error on April 1. You should move to the Data Manager API before April.

At Stape, we have developed a Google Data Manager API Connection and sGTM tags to make using the new API as simple as possible. 

Follow the guides below to configure Google’s Data Manager API:

• Set up automatic Google Customer Match Lists - follow this guide to get detailed instructions on how to automate the creation and updating of your Customer Match lists using the Data Manager API.
• Track Google Ads Conversions using Data Manager API - follow this guide if you want to use the Data Manager API for more than just Customer Match lists, including offline/enhanced conversions and/or server-side online event tracking.