Google is telling advertisers that Google Ads Data Manager will no longer require customer data to be hashed with SHA-256 from November 16, 2026, and will instead accept encrypted customer data by default, decrypting and matching it inside a hardware-isolated trusted execution environment. The notice reached the public today, when Anthony Higman, founder and CEO of ADSQUIRE, posted a copy of the undated email on LinkedIn.

In Short

When businesses send Google their customer lists for advertising, they have had to scramble each email address and phone number first in a fixed way called hashing. From November 16, Google says Data Manager will take the lists locked with encryption instead, unlock them inside a sealed computer, tidy the formatting itself and then look for matching Google accounts. The change affects anyone uploading customer lists or offline sales to Google Ads, and it moves the job of formatting the data, and the trust that the data stays private, from the advertiser's side to Google's sealed system.

What the email says

The email carries the title "Encryption in Google Ads Data Manager" and is addressed to accounts that already use the tool. "You're receiving this message because your Google Ads account [redacted] currently uses Google Ads Data Manager to import first-party offline customer data for Customer Match and enhanced conversions," according to the copy of the email, in which the account name is blacked out. The copy carries no send date.

The reason Google gives is stated in its first line: "We're updating Google Ads Data Manager to offer better performance and to leverage our latest innovations in privacy-enhancing technology."

The substance sits under a heading that reads "What's changing?". According to Google, "Starting on November 16, 2026, we will no longer require hashed customer data (SHA-256) for Google Ads Data Manager and will instead support encrypted customer data by default. This change improves match accuracy using privacy-enhancing technology and minimizes errors caused by formatting discrepancies prior to hashing."

The email then lists the routes covered. "Going forward, your offline data ingested via Google Ads Data Manager (including CRM connections, cloud storage imports, direct file uploads, and the Data Manager API) will be processed in an encrypted format through a trusted execution environment (TEE)," it says.

The last paragraph in the copy describes the processing. "As part of this update, Google Ads decrypts, normalizes, and matches this data with Google account data inside a hardware-isolated trusted execution environment. If a match is found, those records are marked as matched and will be used to improve relevant targeting and measurement in your Google ad campaigns."

That is where the visible text ends. Whether the email continued below that point, with an action required, an opt-out or a help-center link, cannot be determined from the screenshot.

What the LinkedIn post adds

Higman's post consists of a single line above an image of the same email: "Google Ads Is Updating Data Manager To No Longer Require Hashed Customer Data Starting November 16th." The post does not include any commentary on the change beyond that headline, and the image reproduces the same opening paragraphs as the standalone screenshot. The LinkedIn capture shows the post as 23 minutes old at the moment it was saved, on the evening of October 18.

The post therefore adds no facts to the email. Its value lies in dating the notice's first public appearance and in showing that it was sent to more than one account.

Hashing, and why Google says it causes errors

Google Ads Data Manager is the interface and API through which advertisers send first-party data such as customer lists and offline conversions into Google's advertising products. Two of its main uses are named in the email. Customer Match turns an advertiser's list of email addresses, phone numbers and postal addresses into an audience of signed-in Google users. Enhanced conversions attach the same kind of identifiers to a conversion so that Google can credit an ad click that cookie-based tracking would miss.

Until now, the identifiers had to be hashed before they left the advertiser. SHA-256 is a one-way function that turns an input such as an email address into a fixed string of 64 hexadecimal characters. The same input always produces the same output, and that property is what allows matching: Google hashes its own account data the same way and compares the strings.

The weakness is that any difference in the input, however small, produces a completely different hash. A trailing space, a capital letter or a phone number written without its country code yields a string that matches nothing. For that reason, the Data Manager API documentation imposes strict formatting rules before hashing. When Google launched the Data Manager API on December 9, 2025, those rules required phone numbers in E.164 format, addresses built from given name, family name, postal code and a two-letter country code, all lowercase with no punctuation and no leading or trailing spaces, and Gmail addresses stripped of dots and plus-addressing before hashing.

Every one of those steps was the advertiser's responsibility, or that of a CRM vendor or integration partner. A mistake at any point silently reduced the number of records Google could recognize, and the advertiser had no way to see which rows had failed because of formatting rather than because the person had no Google account. The email's phrase "formatting discrepancies prior to hashing" describes that problem. By decrypting the data and normalizing it itself, Google takes over the formatting step.

Google gives no figure for the improvement. The email says the change "improves match accuracy" but cites no percentage, no test and no comparison with current match rate levels.

The trusted execution environment is not new

The email presents processing in a TEE as part of the update. PPC Land's own record shows that the TEE was already in place for Data Manager two years ago.

When Google introduced confidential matching in September 2024, it said that Customer Match and Google Ads Data Manager would use the technology by default for data connections, with no action required from advertisers and no extra charge. Kamal Janardhan, Google's senior director of product management for measurement at the time, said the system isolates business data during processing so that nobody, Google included, can access it. Google also said it would offer attestation, a way to verify that the code running inside the environment is the code it claims to run.

At the Data Protection Forum in April 2025, Google described the same model: data from all parties encrypted before entering the TEE, matching inside it, only matched data leaving, and unmatched customer data deleted.

Encryption also predates this email. The Data Manager API launch documentation listed XChaCha20-Poly1305 encryption, with wrapped data encryption keys protected by Google Cloud or AWS key management services. In an April 2026 episode of Google's Ads DevCast, Google described that encryption as optional and layered on top of confidential matching, and said personally identifiable information could be sent hashed or encrypted.

What the email actually changes, then, is narrower than the headline suggests. Hashing stops being mandatory, and encryption becomes the default rather than an option. Before, the data that entered the TEE had already been reduced to hashes by the advertiser. From November 16, according to the email, the TEE receives encrypted data that it decrypts and then normalizes, which implies that readable email addresses, phone numbers and postal addresses exist inside the environment during processing. That is an inference from the email's description of the sequence ("decrypts, normalizes, and matches"); Google does not say it in those words.

What the email leaves out

The notice is short, and several questions that matter to anyone running an integration are not answered in the visible text.

Existing hashed uploads. "No longer require" suggests hashed data will still be accepted, but the email does not say so. It does not say whether scheduled uploads that currently send SHA-256 hashes will keep working unchanged after November 16, whether they will be converted, or whether they will match at a lower rate than encrypted data.

What "encrypted" means for each route. For the Data Manager API, encryption with customer-managed keys is documented. For direct file uploads through the Google Ads interface, cloud storage imports and CRM connections, the email does not say who holds the keys, whether data in transit is simply protected by standard transport encryption, or whether advertisers must configure anything.

Whether the change is optional. "By default" usually implies that another setting exists. The email does not describe one, nor does it say whether an advertiser can keep sending only hashed data.

Which products and API versions. The email names Customer Match and enhanced conversions in Google Ads. It does not mention Display & Video 360 or Google Analytics, both of which also receive data through the Data Manager API, and it names no API version.

Verification. The 2024 announcement promised attestation. The email does not explain how an advertiser, an auditor or a data protection authority can verify that the environment works as described, or where attestation reports are published.

Unmatched records. The email says matched records are "marked as matched" and used for targeting and measurement. It does not say what happens to records that do not match, how long decrypted data persists inside the environment, or whether any of it is logged.

Legal terms. The email does not mention any change to Google's customer data terms, which advertisers accept before using Customer Match or enhanced conversions.

Hashing was never anonymization

Removing the hashing requirement does not remove a privacy guarantee in the legal sense, because hashing never provided one. In July 2024, the US Federal Trade Commission warned that hashed data is not anonymous, restating guidance it first gave in 2012. A hashed email address, the FTC noted, still identifies the same person every time it appears.

The practical protection hashing offered was narrower: an advertiser could tell itself, its customers and its lawyers that plain-text addresses never left its systems. Under the encrypted model, plain-text addresses leave the advertiser in encrypted form and are opened by Google inside hardware Google operates. The protection now rests on the TEE and on attestation rather than on a transformation applied before upload. Whether that is stronger or weaker depends on how the environment is verified, and the email does not address that.

Raw identifiers have already begun to travel unhashed through Google's matching systems. In September 2026, Customer Match file uploads began accepting raw IP addresses and timestamps, sent unhashed, with matching unavailable for users in the EEA, the UK and Switzerland. PPC Land noted at the time that it was unclear whether those IP rows are processed inside a TEE.

A year of Data Manager consolidation

The email arrives at the end of a sequence in which Google has moved almost every first-party data route into Data Manager. Customer Match uploads through the Google Ads API stopped working on April 1, 2026, with confidential matching and encryption described as features available only through the Data Manager API. On June 15, 2026, Google blocked new adopters from importing offline conversions through the Google Ads API, pointing them to the Data Manager API instead.

The interface changed as well. In May 2026, Google Tag Manager became accessible inside Google Ads through Data Manager, and in June Google merged enhanced conversions for web and for leads into a single setting that combines user-provided data from tags, Data Manager and API connections. The API itself reached version 1.7 on May 28, 2026, extending offline conversion ingestion to Campaign Manager 360, Search Ads 360 and Display & Video 360 and adding an encrypted_user_ids field.

Seen against that sequence, the November 16 change removes one of the last reasons an advertiser might still prepare data outside Google's pipeline. Formatting and hashing were work that integration partners and in-house data teams performed, and that work gave them some control over what left their systems. With Google normalizing the data itself, that step moves inside Google's environment.

Why this matters for advertisers

For marketers who rely on first-party data, the change has two sides. Fewer formatting errors could mean more matched customers in Customer Match audiences and more credited conversions, which in turn feed Smart Bidding. Many smaller advertisers upload spreadsheets by hand, and hashing has been a frequent source of quiet failure in those uploads.

The other side concerns governance. Some data protection assessments of Customer Match were written on the basis that only hashed values left the advertiser, and the email now describes Google decrypting the original data. Agencies that run uploads for clients are in the same position. The email itself offers no documentation that would settle it, and it gives the date, November 16, 2026, as the start of the new processing whether or not that question has been answered.

Google has not published match-rate figures for the encrypted route, and the email does not promise any. The only claim on the record is that accuracy improves. How much will only become visible once advertisers compare their own match rates before and after the switch.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Google, through an email to Google Ads accounts that use Google Ads Data Manager for Customer Match and enhanced conversions. Anthony Higman, founder and CEO of ADSQUIRE, made the notice public on LinkedIn.

What: Data Manager will no longer require customer data to be hashed with SHA-256 and will accept encrypted data by default. Google says it will decrypt, normalize and match the data inside a hardware-isolated trusted execution environment, across CRM connections, cloud storage imports, direct file uploads and the Data Manager API. The email does not say what happens to existing hashed uploads, whether the change is optional, or how the environment is verified.

When: The change takes effect on November 16, 2026. The email is undated; the LinkedIn post appeared on October 18, 2026.

Where: Google Ads Data Manager, globally as far as the email states; it names no countries or exclusions.

Why: According to Google, to improve match accuracy and reduce errors caused by formatting differences before hashing. The change also moves data formatting from advertisers to Google and replaces hashing with TEE processing as the main privacy safeguard.