Dive Brief:
- Facebook is testing allowing brands to target people who have already made an in-store visit via ads on Facebook, Instagram and through its Audience Network ad platform, per Marketing Land.
- The capability was screen-captured and provided to Marketing Land by Moshe Isaacian, although the social media giant didn’t confirm the new targeting option in a statement provided to the publisher.
- The offline-to-online retargeting feature is an option in Facebook Custom Audiences, and should help grab retail ad dollars heading into the back-to-school and holiday shopping seasons.
Dive Insight:
Offline attribution is a marketing goal that mobile has made more possible than ever as increasing numbers of consumers allowing digital ad platforms like Facebook and Google to track their movements via enabled GPS on their devices. As a result, marketers have an opportunity to combine insights into an individual's online and offline behavior to better target ads and offers at the moment when someone appears ready to make a purchase. The original impetus for offline attribution was measuring the effectiveness of online ads in driving visits to physical locations, but the technology allows that process to move in both directions. One of the big challenges with this approach is how granular the location data is. Facebook offers Places and has building out its location-based services for users, giving them a reason to share their location data with the platform.
As shopping becomes increasingly omnichannel, with consumers making no distinction between browsing and purchasing both online and in stores, major digital platforms are extending their reach into physical locations. With retailers' in-store traffic declining, omnichannel consumers are an important audience as these shoppers tend to engage across more of brand's channels and are more valuable in a number of ways, according to a Harvard Business Review study. Last fall Google began tying offline actions to display ads via its DoubleClick platform and this spring it added improvements on that front with its AdWords metrics.
A key value for turning offline visits into digital ads is marketers know they are reaching an audience that has already engaged with their brand in a very tangible way by setting foot in a brick-and-mortar location. For consumers, this also means getting ads that are more relevant to their day-to-day activities along with the potential for offers or promotions they might be more interested in pursuing.