Google already monitors your online shopping - but now it's also keeping an eye on what you're buying in real-world stores as part of its latest effort to sell more digital advertising. The offline tracking scans most credit and debit card transactions to help Google automatically inform merchants when their digital ads translate into sales at a brick-and-mortar store. Google believes the data will show a cause-and-effect relationship between online ads and offline sales. Google is keeping an eye on what you're buying offline in addition to monitoring your online shopping in its latest attempt to sell more digital advertising. The offline tracking of most credit and debit card transactions will help Google to automatically inform merchants when digital ads appearing on its vast marketing network translate into sales at a brick-and-mortar store.

Machine learning, a type of artificial intelligence powered by large-scale data that provides computers with the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed, will change the face of retail over the next few years. Jakub Jirsak via 123RFAccording to Dunnhumby, a customer science company, machine learning will bring about changes of a similar scale or greater to that seen in the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century. The information can also get better over time – the more data and feedback they get. The impact of this technology is that it provides tasks we previously thought only humans could only do through a scalable, untiring, consistent quality digital workforce. Machine learning is helping our lives become more enabled, more streamlined, more friction-free. The learning techniques have been known about for three or four decades but it is only with the dual advances of fast parallel computing and massive data sets that machine learning has proven its worth.

Google already monitors your online shopping -- but now it's also keeping an eye on what you're buying in real-world stores as part of its latest effort to sell more digital advertising. The offline tracking scans most credit and debit card transactions to help Google automatically inform merchants when their digital ads translate into sales at a brick-and-mortar store. Google believes the data will show a cause-and-effect relationship between online ads and offline sales. If it works, that could help persuade merchants to boost their digital marketing budgets. The Mountain View, Calif., company -- a division of Alphabet Inc. -- already runs the world's biggest online ad network, one that raked in $79 billion in revenue last year.

Nearly half of Americans working in retail are at risk of losing their job to a robot, a new study has revealed. An analysis has found up to 7.5 million jobs that deal with merchandise are set to be automated over the next decade. The researchers discovered that those who work as cashiers have the highest risk of being replaced - and 73 percent of those positions are held by women. An analysis has found up to 7.5 million jobs that deal with merchandise are set to be automated over the next decade– leaving behind a large portion of'stranded workers'. The study was released by Cornerstone Capital Group that found there are some 16 million American working in retail, 'which represents 10 percent of the nation's working population and generates 6 percent of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP),' reads a press release. 'This in-depth examination of retail automation gives investors insights as they consider investment risks and opportunities,' said Jon Lukomnik, IRRCi executive director.

Shoppers can literally grab and go without paying for their goods at a cash register at Amazon's new smart grocery store in Seattle. People walk past an Amazon Go store, currently open only to Amazon employees, Thursday, April 27, 2017, in Seattle. Amazon Go shops are convenience stores that don't use cashiers or checkout lines, but use a tracking system that of sensors, algorithms, and cameras to determine what a customer has bought. SAN FRANCISCO -- Amazon seems to be looking to export its experimental checkout-less grocery story to the United Kingdom with Friday's registration of the trademark of "No Queue. Similar trademarks are in process in the European Union's Intellectual Property Office.

China's biggest online retailer, JD.com Inc., announced plans Monday to develop drone aircraft capable of carrying a ton or more for long-distance deliveries. The company said it will test the drones on a network it is developing to cover the northern Chinese province of Shaanxi. It said they will carry consumer goods to remote areas and farm produce to cities. JD.com, headquartered in Beijing, says it made its first deliveries to customers using smaller drones in November. Other e-commerce brands including Amazon.com Inc. also are experimenting with drones for delivery. "We envision a network that will be able to efficiently transport goods between cities, and even between provinces, in the future," the chief executive of JD's logistics business group, Wang Zhenhui, said in a statement.

BEIJING – China's biggest online retailer, JD.com Inc., announced plans Monday to develop drone aircraft capable of carrying a ton or more for long-distance deliveries. The company said it will test the drones on a network it is developing to cover the northern Chinese province of Shaanxi. It said they will carry consumer goods to remote areas and farm produce to cities. JD.com, headquartered in Beijing, says it made its first deliveries to customers using smaller drones in November. Other e-commerce brands including Amazon.com Inc. also are experimenting with drones for delivery. "We envision a network that will be able to efficiently transport goods between cities, and even between provinces, in the future," the chief executive of JD's logistics business group, Wang Zhenhui, said in a statement.

Drone delivery in China and other countries faces hurdles including airspace restrictions and the need to avoid collisions with birds and other obstacles. In the United States, regulators allow commercial drone flights only on an experimental basis.

China's Shaanxi province is famous for being the start of the Silk Road, an ancient trade network where silk and spices were transported by camel across the Asian continent. Soon, the central Chinese province will be recognized for a different form of transport. Chinese e-commerce provider JD.com said Monday it is developing heavy-duty drones capable of delivering payloads weighing one ton or more, which it plans to deploy in Shaanxi. JD, China's No. 2 e-commerce company after Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., in 2016 started delivering small packages via drone as a way to bring online orders to shoppers in remote rural villages. Its fleet of about 30 drones have already been bringing shipments to customers in the remote areas of Beijing, and in Sichuan, Jiangsu, Shaanxi and Guizhou provinces, which are home to more than 230 million people.

The consumer in-store retail experience is undergoing a critical evolution, and it's clearly upended the retail industry: in the first four months of 2017 alone, there have been fourteen retail bankruptcies -- almost as many as in all of 2016. Other companies, such as J.C. Penney, Macy's, and Sears, have announced massive store closures. While putting together Firebrand Group's Future of Artificial Intelligence report for our clients (you can get an excerpt, focused on retail innovation, here), my team and I reviewed nearly one hundred brands engaging in some form of retail innovation. Starbucks already allows people to order remotely and go into their retail locations to pick up drinks, and is presently deploying an AI assistant into their app. Called My Starbucks Barista, the feature will allow users to place orders with one tap of a button, then speaking to a virtual barista.