More than a week after Google admitted that the company tracks users' location even after they disable location history, it has now been revealed that the tech giant signed a secret agreement with Mastercard that allows it to track what users buy offline.
Google has paid Mastercard millions of dollars in exchange for access to this information.
Neither Google nor Mastercard have publicly announced the business partnership to allow Google to measure retail spending, although the agreement has now been revealed by Bloomberg.
Según cuatro personas no identificadas con conocimiento del acuerdo citado por el medio de comunicación, Google y Mastercard llegaron al acuerdo después de una negociación de cuatro años, en el que todos los datos de transacciones de Mastercard en los EE. UU. Se cifraron y transmitieron a Google.
Google empaquetó los datos en una nueva herramienta para anunciantes, llamada Store Sales Measurement, y actualmente está probando la herramienta con un pequeño grupo de anunciantes, lo que les permite rastrear si los anuncios en línea se convirtieron en ventas minoristas del mundo real.
Last year, cuando Google anunció su servicio de medición de ventas en la tienda, solo dijo que la compañía tenía acceso a aproximadamente el 70% of the credit and debit cards of the U.S.. UU. Through partners, but did not disclose their names.
This suggests that not only Mastercard, Google also has agreements with other credit card companies, which add up to the 70% of the people who use credit and debit cards in the United States.
However, it seems that users can opt out of offline ad tracking simply by turning off “Web & App Activity” in their Google account.
Mastercard denied that the company provided personal information to third parties. This is what a Mastercard spokesperson said in a statement: “Regarding the article [from Bloomberg] that you cited, I state that the premise of what was reported is false. The way our network operates, does not know which items that consumer has purchased are in any shopping cart, whether physical or digital.
No individual transaction or personal data is provided to third parties. The privacy expectations of consumers and merchants around the world are met. When processing a transaction, we see the retailer's name and the consumer's total purchase amount, but not specific items.”
Google also said that it did not have access to any personal information from its partners' credit and debit cards, nor is any personal information shared with partners.
Without any doubt, the deal has been a great help to Google, ya que los anunciantes obtienen ganancias mayores y están dispuestos a pagar más dinero a Google.