Friday, December 21, 2012

Google Has Figured Out How To Track You Even ... - Business Insider

Google has a new advertising product, called "Conversions API," that allows advertisers to track your offline purchases and match them to your online behavior.

Until now, advertisers have inferred that anyone searching for, say, "Chevrolet" is likely shopping for a car. Google thus displays Chevy ads -- or ads for competitors -- to anyone who inputs that search request.

But advertisers have loads of their own offline data from existing customers that they have not been able to use to target search ads. Conversions API allows those advertisers to upload phone numbers and in-store purchase data and use that information to target search ads through DoubleClick, Google's search ad system.

Google's announcement was thin on details. It says advertisers can now "upload new conversions to account for in-store transactions, call-tracking, or other offline activities, or edit existing conversions to account for discounts, returns, credit, or fraud."

That sounds a lot like Facebook's Custom Audiences tool, which allows advertises to upload their own customers lists of email addresses and phone numbers, and serve ads targeting those lists. The new Google product thus competes head to head with Facebook's.

Google doesn't specifically say this, but it's likely that data from those conversion lists will be blinded and delivered anonymously in aggregate. Neither the advertiser nor Google will be able to track you individually. All they will know is that of the total number of phone numbers targeted, a certain percentage saw ads and/or acted on them.

From your point of view, however, Google might start to feel a little spooky. If you bought a T shirt at The Gap in the mall with your credit card, you could start seeing a lot more Gap ads online later, suggesting jeans that go with that shirt.

We've reached out to Google for more information, and we'll publish an update when they get back to us.

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/google-has-figured-out-how-to-track-you-even-when-youre-offline-2012-12

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