The Mountain View, California, company touted the store-sales measurement tool Tuesday in San Francisco at an annual conference it hosts for its advertisers.
This meeting was an opportunity not only for Google to flaunt its new tools, but to work on regaining ground with advertisers who have recently boycotted YouTube . Major advertisers began pulling back two months ago over concerns that Google hadn’t prevented major brand advertising from appearing alongside extremist video clips promoting hate and violence.
DIGITAL DOSSIERS
Google already knows what you like based on the searches you make and the videos you watch. Online ads are then targeted to those interests. From there, Google can tell when you click on an ad and if you make an online purchase based on that.
The new program takes that tracking into physical stores.
Google says its computers rely primarily on log-in information, such as email addresses, to identify the people clicking on ads. It then matches that data with other identifying information compiled by merchants and the issuers of credit and debit cards to figure out when digital ads contribute to an offline purchase.
