Google, Mastercard Reach Deal To Track If Online Ads Lead To Physical Sales - Reports

Google, Mastercard Reach Deal to Track if Online Ads Lead to Physical Sales - Reports

Google has reached a previously undisclosed deal with Mastercard that will enable the company to see whether online advertisements lead to sales in physical stores in the United States, US media reported.

NEW YORK (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 31st August, 2018) Google has reached a previously undisclosed deal with Mastercard that will enable the company to see whether online advertisements lead to sales in physical stores in the United States, US media reported.

Bloomberg reported that Google paid for a large swath of Mastercard transactions to create a tool for measuring retail spending.

Consumers were previously unaware of being tracked as the two companies never publicly announced the deal, the report said.

The tool tracks users' shopping activity online when logging in to their Google accounts, and then compares the data to their "offline" shopping activity.

If a consumer clicks on an online advertisement and does not buy the product, but within 30 days goes to a physical store and purchases the product with Mastercard, retailers who advertise with Google would be able to see the purchase in the "offline revenue" column of their sales report.

The deal with Mastercard, which is a part of Google's larger business strategy, raises privacy concerns about how much data giant tech firms collect without disclosing to customers and how they use it.

The report cited advocacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center counsel Christine Bannan as saying that people do not expect what they buy physically in a store to be linked to what they are buying online.

"There's just far too much burden that companies place on consumers and not enough responsibility being taken by companies to inform users what they're doing and what rights they have," Bannan said.

Google reportedly paid Mastercard a sum in the millions of Dollars for the supplied data, and the two companies discussed sharing advertisements revenues, the report said.

Google may be exploring similar deals with other companies, according to the report.