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Google announced they are making view-through conversion tracking for banners on the Content Network last Wednesday. So if someone sees your banner on a publisher’s site running AdSense and comes to your site within 30 days you can capture the conversion.

Ok we know they have always been able to know when the banner runs – it gets called from Google – but to be able to track if the people who saw the ad convert takes the loading of a cookie when the banner loads in the browser.

This seems a little intrusive and given Google noted they were testing this months ago so they could launch it – “Earlier this year, we mentioned our plans to improve the measurement of conversions for display advertising campaigns on the Google Content Network” – means they have been tracking people’s activities for some time.

When it was a method of tracking numbers of clicks to number of conversions, you had the click and the load of a cookie based on the action, but to start tracking just from the banner being seen – while a boon to marketers calls privacy issues in to the mix.

The bigger question is how long has this tracking been in place and what type of information has been captured?

Related posts:

1. Google AdWords Updates Conversion Tracking Options
2. Google Analytics Event Tracking to Monitor Calls to Action
3. AdSense Gets YouTube Promoted Videos and View-Through Conversion Reporting
4. AdSense Gets YouTube Promoted Videos and View-Through Conversion Reporting
5. Google Analytics Tracking Code Basics and Time Saving Plugins