Many companies are choosing online advertising more and more for its wide reach and easy-to-track nature. Google has had great success with this tactic, using it with Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Search, but it’s had difficulty determining which brick-and-mortar stores customers visit and how much they spend at those stores. Recently, that’s become much easier.

The company plans to correlate digital advertisements with physical purchases in the near future by examining 70% of consumer credit and debit card information. Because 90% of sales occur in physical stores, it’s challenging to link those sales to digital marketing, which is problematic for the largely online presence of Google.

When businesses expand their knowledge regarding their consumers’ interests and purchase behaviour, they can better advertise their products and bring in more revenue. However, this additional information can threaten the privacy and security of many consumers. Fortunately, Google gives customers the option of sending their information to the company for a more targeted approach and anonymizes the customer data it collects so that only the computers know who each person is.

Companies must take automation into consideration when implementing these new strategies, especially when internet users can set up ad blocks and deny location access. More importantly, anonymity must be maintained or improved to protect user privacy. Advancements in the near future could have machines following the lives of customers even more closely than they do now, and most people want to feel safe and secure wherever they are.

Linking online marketing to physical purchases will become easy and useful if companies take precautionary measures to protect themselves and their clients. Soon enough, several businesses will be on par with each other and will have to increase the value of their products and services to be chosen over their competitors.