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Google made a secret deal with MasterCard to track Offline sales

According to multiple sources, a secret deal took place between Google and MasterCard to allow Google to track its users when they click through Google ads and end up making the purchase offline in physical stores.

This deal was never officially announced by both parties.
 
This partnership will allow Google to increase their advertising platform which generated approximately $95.4 billion dollars last year.

Google has gained access to MasterCard data to gain valuable data on how online ads make an influence into offline retail shopping.
 
According to Bloomberg, Google was in a negotiation with MasterCard for about four years, which is worth millions of dollars, Obviously, the Alphabet company is doing strategic partnership to provide more insights, and valuable data measurements to its advertisers that will increase the search giant’s advertising revenue compared to Amazon, Facebook and other platforms.

How offline sales tracking on Google Ads works

In the past, The Alphabet company used to link online ad clicks and retail sales using Google Wallets, location data on users’s phone and third party receipts collection to confirm ad clicks conversion into sales, but with this new partnerships with MasterCards, Ads measurement just got deeper and more accurate about ad conversion online and offline.
It is believed that Google is possibly already doing this type of partnerships with other payment processing companies, but we don’t have any names yet.

But obviously many users don’t use Google Wallets or collect digital receipts, and that made Google unaware of their offline purchasing behavior, and that’s why this new deal comes to play.
 

Here is an example on how MasterCards and Google’s deal will be beneficial

Let’s say you’re logged in to your Google account, and you’re just looking to buy some “running shoes”, you will see some ads on your search, You’re behavior is recorded on any ad you click on even if you end up ignoring the page and don’t buy the item. your history is saved within 30 days of your ad clicks. So when you go to the store and make the purchase of “any related shoes” Google will be able to link your retail purchase to the search you already did. Thanks to the MasterCard’s data that they now have access to.

Obviously, great advertisers will have more accurate data including a section called “Offline Revenue”, listing all the offline sales that are completed in results of the online Google ad.

 

Conclusion

Marketers and agencies were always asking for this type of data tracking for a long time for a better advertising measurement.
According to Google, a small group of advertisers in the US have been selected to test this new insights collection for better data analytic and offline sales measurement.

Also Just last year in May 2017, Google announced “Store Sales Measurement” where retail companies with personal information about their consumers such as encrypted email addresses, CCs, names and addresses, to upload those information into Google’s platform to synchronize ad buys to retail sales.

Of course, all of this can raise a privacy issue about data collection and users behavior, Google spokesperson confirms that all shopper’s personal information between retailers and advertisers are not shown and well encrypted.

Keep in mind that Google also gives the ability to users to opt-out from ad tracking, just in case you mysteriously care about “your privacy”.

Source: Blomberg, DigitalTrends.com