Dive Brief:
- Unacast and Total Communicator Solutions have announced a partnership to retarget digital ads to shoppers based on in-store activity captured by “beacon” technologies.
- Consumers who opt to accept beacon broadcasts and shop in stores with Bluetooth activated on their smartphones will later receive ads for specific items on their desktops and other devices.
- Estimates say that more than 4.5 million beacons will be broadcasting in the United States by 2018, and 3.5 million of them will be installed in retail stores.
Dive Insight:
“Beacon” technologies could soon capture data where it is difficult to track consumer interest without old-fashioned interpersonal interaction: brick-and-mortar stores. A partnership between Norwegian media platform Unacast and California-based proximity solutions specialist Total Communicator Solutions plans to capture and gauge consumer interest in specific items in-store using beacons, then use that data to target the same shoppers with online and mobile ads.
The partnership represents the first effort to automate and quantify in-person shopping. If successful, marketers could use the technology to target potential buyers much like they would following a visit to a retail website. A prospect picking up or trying on an item would be similar to clicking on a product—and produce just as much actionable data.