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Mastercard Technology

Google partners with Mastercard to pair online ads with offline sales

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By John Glenday, Reporter

August 31, 2018 | 3 min read

Google has entered into a partnership agreement with payments provider Mastercard in order to directly link its online adverts with purchases made offline.

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Google partners with Mastercard to pair online ads with offline sales

According to Bloomberg the pairing has seen Google buy data on purchases made by card holders for the past year. This allowed it to accurately track whether its online ads have been effective at influencing purchase decisions.

Both Google and Mastercard had kept quiet on their partnership however, keeping customers in the dark about their relationship and the extent of their tracking until Bloomberg lifted the lid, although both say that aggregated data identifying individuals has been anonymised.

Responding to these reports Google said: “Before we launched this beta product last year, we built a new, double-blind encryption technology that prevents both Google and our partners from viewing our 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. Google users can opt-out with their Web and App Activity controls, at any time.”

Mastercard has similarly stressed that no individual transaction or personal data changes hands, providing only the name of the retailer and total value of the purchase.

It is suggested that Google has parted with millions of dollars to secure its data prize, enabling it to court advertisers with a new tool capable of saying whether a viewed ad later led to a purchase.

Mastercard has declared 2018 as a 'year of action' during which it will spur customers into pursuing social good goals.

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