Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales

[Revelate]

For the past year, select Google advertisers have had access to a potent new tool to track whether the ads they ran online led to a sale at a physical store in the U.S. That insight came thanks in part to a stockpile of Mastercard transactions that Google paid for.

But most of the two billion Mastercard holders aren’t aware of this behind-the-scenes tracking. That’s because the companies never told the public about the arrangement.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-30/google-and-mastercard-cut-a-secret-ad-deal-to-tra...

[Anonymous]

I read that the other day and thought why? In this day and age who's gonna go to a physical store to buy somehting they saw advertised online, instead of just clicking the link and buying it th and there. I can't recall ever going to the store after seeing an ad online. Mostly because half the time they wouldn't have it to begin with due to everyone shopping Amazon.

[iv]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I read that the other day and thought why? In this day and age who's gonna go to a physical store to buy somehting they saw advertised online, instead of just clicking the link and buying it th and there. I can't recall ever going to the store after seeing an ad online. Mostly because half the time they wouldn't have it to begin with due to everyone shopping Amazon.

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And yet... people do actually still shop in physical stores. Lots of people. ("Fewer" is not the same as "none".)

Amazon may be the 800lb gorilla online (almost half of all US online sales!), but even as big as they are, they still only account for about 5% of TOTAL retail sales in the US: https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/13/amazons-share-of-the-us-e-commerce-market-is-now-49-or-5-of-all-retail-spend/

And most of those people shopping in physical stores will have seen an online ad, while signed into Google, or Facebook, etc... combining online identities with physical purchases is amazingly powerful for marketing. And amazingly creepy for everyone else. Don't forget that this has been happening for online purchases for years - the news here is the online/physical connection.

Yes, yes, you browse with an ad-blocker, you clear cookies, you use Incognito Mode, etc, etc... good for you!

However:

1. Most people don't do that...

2. No matter how paranoid you are... someone else is getting paid to figure out a better way of fingerprinting your devices to track your activity.

Honestly, the tech involved would be kinda neat... if it wasn't so concerning.

For a public example of (some) of the techniques, check out https://amiunique.org/