Report: Google tracks Web ad influence on in-store purchases

Mountain View, Calif. – Google is reportedly piloting a service known as In-Store Attribution Transaction Reporting in AdWords that lets retailers compare how their AdWords Internet search campaigns affect in-store sales. According to the Wall Street Journal, the service matches data from anonymous tracking cookies to in-store sales data provided by technology providers including DataLogix, Acxiom, LiveRamp, and Epsilon.



AdWords allows companies to place ads next to select search results and pay for click-throughs. The pilot Google program, which includes Michaels Stores Inc. and several other unidentified retailers, match anonymous numbers assigned customers to their personal profiles and purchase histories that are collected through various loyalty and marketing programs.



Thus retailers can be notified when someone who clicked through an AdWords advertisement made an in-store purchase, without the customer’s specific identity being revealed. This allows Google to give retailers an idea of how many in-store sales individual AdWords advertisements generated.