Bryan Clark* says a deal between Google and Mastercard links online advertisements with real world purchases.
Google has quietly been providing select advertisers with a ‘stockpile’ of offline credit card transaction data.
After a four year negotiation, Google and Mastercard reached a deal that would pay the latter millions in exchange for coughing up data on its card holders, according to a Bloomberg report.
Google then packaged the data into a new tool, called Store Sales Measurement, that allowed its customers to track whether online ads turned into real world retail sales.
Neither company informed its users of the arrangement.
For Mastercard, that means the bulk of its two billion customers have no knowledge of the behind-the-scenes tracking.
Counsel with the advocacy group, Electronic Privacy Information Centre, Christine Bannan told Bloomberg that people did not expect what they bought physically in a store to be linked to what they were 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,” Ms Bannan said.
Last year, when Google first announced the Store Sales Measurement service, the company claimed to have access to “approximately 70 per cent” of American credit and debit cards.
Purchases made on Mastercard-branded cards accounted for some 25 per cent of all credit card transactions in the United States, according to financial research firm Nilson Report.
Though Google didn’t name its partners, the 70 per cent figure would suggest Mastercard isn’t the only credit card company it is currently partnered with.
Visa and American Express did not respond to our inquiries about whether they also had similar arrangements with Google.
A Google spokesperson told The Next Web that before it launched the beta product it built double-blind encryption technology that prevented both Google and its partners from viewing respective users’ personally identifiable information.
“We do not have access to any personal information from our partners’ credit and debit cards, nor do we share any personal information with our partners,” the spokesperson said.
“Google users can opt-out with their Web and App Activity controls at any time.”
While users have the ability to opt out of offline tracking, it remains unclear whether most users even know it exists.
The opt-out tool Google mentions makes no mention of tracking offline purchases.
For Google, this is just another step in bridging the gap between online ads and offline sales.
Since at least 2014, the company has used Google Maps to notify advertisers about users who viewed their ads and then visited brick-and-mortar establishments.
This tool, however, didn’t track sales made within the stores.
Mastercard couldn’t be reached for official comment.
However, a spokesperson is on record as saying that the premise of the Bloomberg article was false.
The way our network operates, we do not know the individual items that a consumer purchases in any shopping card — physical or digital,” the spokesperson said.
“No individual transactions or personal data is provided.
“That delivers on the expectation of privacy from both consumers and merchants around the world.
“In processing a transaction, we see the retailers name and the total amount of the consumer’s purchase, but not specific items.”
*Bryan Clark is the United States editor of The Next Web. He tweets at @TheNextWeb and @bryanclark.
This article first appeared at thenextweb.com.
