Google bought Mastercard data to link ads with purchases made offline

According to Bloomberg, it has acquired information about the physical store operations of US users of MasterCard cards.

Google's latest attempt to demonstrate to its advertising customers how effective the ads they contract with them has been to buy bank transaction data made with a card.

According to Bloomberg, it has acquired information about the physical store operations of US users of Mastercard cards after paying several million dollars.

All this has been happening over the last year, according to the US media, without Google or Mastercard having communicated it to their private customers or the public.

The only thing that was known was that Google, last year, announced a service called Store Sales Measurement in which it claimed to have access to about 70 percent of US credit and debit card transactions through agreements with third parties. That, for Bloomberg, could mean that the company has agreements that involve all card users and that percentage corresponds to those who have Google accounts.

Neither the users of the cards nor those who accessed the content of the ads had easy to know that their offline purchases are being tracked through Mastercard's purchasing history and related to the interactions they have made in advertising placed by Google.