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Google Following Your Offline Credit Card Spending To Tell Advertisers If Their Ads Work (consumerist.com)
One of the new tools Google has announced for its advertisers today promises to tie your offline credit card data together with all your online viewing to tell advertisers exactly what's working as they try to target you and your wallet. Consumerist reports: That return, for decades, was hard to measure in all but the most vaguely correlative of ways. Did people buy your product after seeing your TV ad? After seeing your billboard? On a whim after seeing neither? Who knows! But in the age of highly targeted, algorithmic advertising, the landscape is completely different. The apps on your phone know what you looked at and when, and can tie that in to what you see on other devices you're also logged into their services on (like your work computer). Meanwhile, you're leaving tracks out in the physical world -- not only the location history of your phone, but also the trail of payments you leave behind you if you pay with a credit card, debit card, or app (as millions of us do). Google also introduced some offline measurements to its online tool suite back in 2014, when it started using phone location data to try to match store visit location data to digital ad views. But a store doesn't make any money when you simply walk into it; you need to buy something. So Google's tracking that very granularly now, too. "In the coming months, we'll be rolling out store sales measurement at the device and campaign levels. This will allow you to measure in-store revenue in addition to the store visits delivered by your Search and Shopping ads," Google explains to advertisers. That's very literally a collection of spending data matched to the people who spent it, matched in turn to people who saw ads.
They give me $0.30 for answering if I went somewhere and used a credit card.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
I always use cash. Same reason I use a pad of paper and pen / pencil for taking notes. Its easy and always works. Sometimes the best tech is low tech.
... I say, "Awesome! This will be incredibly useful for customer tracking!"
As a consumer, I use cash.
I don't respond to AC's.
Google turned evil so gradually I didn't even notice.
Silly question.
Once again it proves that privacy does not exist unless you pay for everything in cash. But if you pay for everything in cash you are probably automatically becoming a suspect and banks and govt start accusing you of shade stuff.
"The apps on your phone know what you looked at and when, and can tie that in to what you see on other devices you're also logged into their services on (like your work computer)."
No, they don't, because I don't load up my phone with all that useless bullshit. The apps that aren't in use get disabled and/or deleted.
"Meanwhile, you're leaving tracks out in the physical world -- not only the location history of your phone"
No, I'm not because I don't turn all that battery-sucking GPS and location crap. I also don't turn on wifi except in a few specific locations. Yes, they can track me via cell towers, but it's rarely going to tie my purchases to anything identifiable because most of the time I use cash. Track that, you fuckers.
"but also the trail of payments you leave behind you if you pay with a credit card, debit card, or app (as millions of us do)."
Millions might, but I'm not one of them. Suck it, Google.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
I don't want to sound like an Apple shill, but the reason so many merchants and CC companies don't like apple pay is that it hides this info from the network and point of sale.
I'm even suspicious of one-time numbers from the CC company since that company knows who you are.
Used to have the "don't be evil" slogan, I wonder what their new one is?
Website Just Down For Me? Find out
As near as I can tell this requires me to use Google's services so they can track the ad side. But I don't use ads or Google. Google code is not allowed to run on my machines... and GPS data isn't shared with much more than my "compass" app. I've opted out of Google's tracking machine. Even my IP is proxied at the moment. And as I sit and type this my browser has filtered all their analytics crap off this web page. 14 domains rejected. I'm sure there are some crumbs left, but overall I don't think the Google will have much luck associating Anonymous Coward on Other IP to a credit card I used at Amazon. /shrug
if Google also implemented a mechanism by which I can tell advertisers that I would have bought their products if their ads hadn't be so stupid, annoying and intrusive that they offended me.
Seriously. They need to be told this. Often.
Reading the article, it seems Google buys data from 3rd parties to get anonymized data on credit/debit card use at stores; they only get how much was spent rather than an itemized list of what was purchased. If someone spent $1 at McDonalds, what did they buy? Something off the dollar menu, but more specifically, who knows. Someone spent $10 at a dollar store; what did they buy? Could've been anything. Unless items are priced uniquely, you're not going to have much luck guessing what they bought if the shopper purchases more than a couple items. More to the point, retailers who might care about this data already have it, and it's much more granular. If McDonalds wants to know how many $1 coffees were sold at a specific McDonalds store yesterday morning, they can bring up a precise number, including cash transactions. What's novel is that Google can correlate this to ad viewing, without necessarily telling a retailer how many times a specific person viewed an ad for a given thing (and letting the retailer do the correlation). It'd be more effective if the retailer were given the raw data and allowed to do the correlation, but then Google would have less control (and wouldn't be able to ensure anonymization). Hypothetically, retailers could give Google their raw data, and I expect such a thing to be an option in the future. Then they'll be able to realize what this alarmist article is warning about, which is... I dunno, figuring out how easily specific people are swayed by advertising? Does that really introduce a problem not already caused by pervasive advertising?
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Try to repeat : "granularly". granularly, granull larly, gnarularlly, granul larly, granularly
they have to. Because it's taken as a truism in business that companies must do everything in their power up to the limits of legality to advance the shareholder's interests. As long as that belief is allowed to exist you'll get stuff like this. And I don't see it going away naturally. Short of the Federal Government stepping in and regulating that's just the way things will be. That's because any company that doesn't 'be evil' will get out competed by another that is. There are a few exceptions (Costco & QT come to mind) but they're not really 'public'. Both companies are majority owned by individuals and both have shareholders circling the current owners like buzzards waiting for them to die of old age and pass the company onto somebody less moral.
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Privacy is stronger here than in the us apparently. I am quite certain bank would not be allowed to sell what looks like intimate data (what you buy), nor would be allowed to tie bank card usage to selling your data.
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I'm pretty sure that advertisers will be terrified to learn that most of us use ad blockers (and for a good reason), we couldn't care less about ads and that big names have been cashing on their false advertising hopes for years.
I don't even have a credit card to my name, I just buy those gift ones if it's absolutely necessary.
Online advertising doesn't work and Google now has hard data to prove it.
they have to. Because it's taken as a truism in business that companies must do everything in their power up to the limits of legality to advance the shareholder's interests.
That statement is so yesterday. "Limits of legality" don't apply any more. Prime example: Uber, but they're just the most high-profile of the many companies that just don't care about what's legal and what's not.
Just saying..
To take an example from the article, just because you saw an ad for a coffee and then buy one the next day at somewhere near your work does not necessarily mean that the ad has influenced you. It could, for example, be that you always (or frequently) buy that coffee from that location on your way to work or during your lunch break. Nor can they tell if an ad has a negative effect. You intend to buy an X and there is a choice of brands/models, you might see an ad and that ad make you not consider the particular brand/model being advertised.
Just waiting for prominent Google asshole commenter Shawn Willden to tell us what a great idea this is...Or is it that everyone else at Google is evil except you?
It is to reduce fraud and false charges by only using a CC number for a single transaction, or a single series of transactions (like maybe a subscription plan for a magazine.)
By doing so they are cutting down on their own costs related to fraud prevention, litigation, and payouts/insurance premiums.
Since your name (and presumably signature, barring online shopping) is linked to all CC purchases, it lacked in 'anonymity' either way.
Well, if you are going to just stand like that in the privacy of your own bedroom, you really should expect Google to drop a load in you... You should be pleased that they didn't also fill your mouth.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Uber's about to get slapped down really hard by the law.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Google could be much, much more evil if they wanted to be. Microsoft was much more evil, then went kinda okay, and is now quite evil again.
The idea that all companies have to be maximum evil, up to the limit of the law, is silly.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Well, there is that whole customer choice thing also keeping them in check. You will note that the most evil companies have little or no competition. (Comcast, ATT, Chase...)
Are the banks & CC companies sharing all of their transaction data with Google?
"youâ(TM)re leaving tracks out in the physical world â" not only the location history of your phone, but also the trail of payments you leave behind you if you pay with a credit card, debit card..."
Yes, but how does Google acquire the data from the credit & debit cards to match up with the data you give them by using your smart phone? The article isn't clear on that point. Google might know you saw the ad & might know that you went to a particular location. If the store shares sales data, Google might also know that *someone* bought a particular product at a particular place & time. Where does the card data come into the picture?
The article mentions store "loyalty programs" which of course could be tied to a particular person. Do those programs make you provide your cell phone # as well? If not, how can those purchases be tied to your phone?
Maybe back in the day when radio, news papers and television was our only source of advertising but these days we're so used to being inundated with it that I think a lot of us just block it out, or it even annoys us to the point where we want nothing to do with that product. Personally ads don't usually bother me because I rarely even notice them now, I rip thru facebook and my eye never once goes to the side of the page or if Its in the feed I don't even notice what it is, I just know its not one of my pages or friends I follow so I rip past it. My point is, in todays massive information age I'm curious to know how many other people have trained themselves to disregard advertisements and to not even look there anymore, like a subconscious adblocker - or how many other people that when annoyed by an ad will skip the product in the store? when I see Old Spice in the store I avoid it because I do the same thing when I see ads for it. Dove soap? No, I'm already mad now at your mandatory 30 second ad and now that logo is a visual reminder and ill move on.
I honestly question the long term efficacy of targeted advertising.
I'm not sure if they're getting data directly from Visa/MC, but why not just let them have it. Make all that data available through a REST API. We obviously can't stop them from tracking us, so why not let them just have out data easily -- and get the data ourselves while we're at it.
Sure, you can download spending data from some banks, but it's not easy. Why not require that banks and/or vendors make every single non-cash transaction available, including itemized details rather than just totals, available in real time via a standard protocol. Imagine the apps we could write to introduce real competition and price comparison into the market if we had that data.
One thing important to note is that *you* don't always know what did or didn't influence your purchasing decisions. There's a reason some marketing curricula include psychology or sociology courses. The value Google adds is that they can evaluate the response en masse of an ad campaign. So even if your specific purchase was not specifically motivated by an ad you saw, if a advertiser sees a non-negligible uptick in the purchase of their product following an ad campaign, that is important. Also, Google can help tell them what kinds of people bought what products after seeing what kinds of ads. The advertiser doesn't care whether Graham Murray bought a frapalopacino eight hours after a flash ad. But if 20% more people who saw that ad bought one compared to people who didn't, then they have an idea of how successful the campaign was.
How do they know a purchase is response to an ad?
They don't necessarily, but in most cases it probably is in response to the ad, and even if it's not they can attribute it to the ad for lack of any other data. After all, if they can show that a purchase was made in response to an ad that was purchased through Google, that will mean the company is more likely to advertise through Google in the future.
Not how bitcoin works. Everyone can track your transactions. Maybe they don't now that wallet belongs to you, that's different story.
Companies with enough advertising budget can figure it out for themselves "the hard way". Let's say that a specific widget sells X per week.
The company runs a series of ads with a radio station. Did sales increase enough to cover the cost of the ads, and then some?
A few months later, they'll try with another radio station, or a TV station, and look at what happens to weekly sales figures.
Similarly, they can launch an online ad campaign, and see what happens. The company will stick with whatever strategy works out best for them financially, because profit is the only goal.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
I promise that I will NEVER purchase from a company that keeps targeting me everywhere I go on the internet! Just won't!!
This has been going on for a decade or more and you're just reporting on it now? Great job!