Google is rolling out this year two tools that help to drive and measure the actual impact of online advertising in physical store sales for advertisers to be used in their YouTube TrueView video campaigns. The two tools are Location extensions and Store visits.
Google is also introducing late this year two new tools enhancing Location exensions and Store visits.
The first one will allow the advertiser to directly import transaction data into Adwords. The second one will allow the marketer take advantage of Google’s third party partnerships to get store sales data with no new inhouse tech implementation required.
The announcements were made by Sridhar Ramaswamy (Senior Vice President of Ads and Commerce) at the Google Marketing Next annual event 2017 held yesterday.
“The reality today is that consumers no longer distinguish between online and offline”…. We must meet this critical reality for business, offering Non-line assistance. That’s funny phrase,” Ramaswamy underscored.
70% of smartphone users who did a purchase in a brick and mortar store searched before in the Internet
And Google explained why: “They interact with your brand on digital as they do with any of their stores and branches. As a result there’s increasingly no line between channels.
“The consumer is now the channel as he moves seamlessly between contexts and surfaces, before, during, after a visit. For example, when people are deciding where to go, where to shop or have fun, they take their smartphone to explore and find what’s around them. In fact 70% of smartphone users who bought something in a store, first turned to its device for relevant information about their purchase.”
About Location extensions
Location extensions can help people find your locations by showing your ads with your address, a map to your location, or the distance to your business. People can then click or tap your extension to get further details about your location on your location page, which includes the most relevant business information all in one place. Location extensions may also include a phone number or call button so that users can easily call your business.
“Soon you’ll be able to showcase local information alongside video ads to help consumers get directions, check business hours, and more. And you’ll be able to measure the impact to your in-store foot traffic,” unveiled Google’s Senior Vice president of Ads and Commerce.
Store visits, bridging the gap between online ads and offline business results
“We introduced store visits measurement two years ago to give businesses deeper insight into this behavior, to help you bridge the gap between your online ads and offline business results.
“Using advanced machine learning and the same technology that powers Google Maps, which is an amazing platform, only Google provides information at the scale and accuracy you need to make critical decisions about your business.
“In less than three years, we’ve helped advertisers measure more than 5Bn store visits annually. And today I’m excited to announce that we’re soon rolling out location extensions and store visits for You Tube TrueView video campaigns. Tha’s pretty cool,” he explained.
Importing Instore transaction data to Adwords and taking advantage of 3rd party partnerships
“Finally”, Sridhar Ramaswamy continued “what is critical to understand the impact of online ads on instore visits is how this visits drive actual sales and revenue for you. We’ve found that consumers who click on an advertiser’s Google Search ad before visiting a store are over 25% more likely to make a purchase while they’re at the store and they also spend over 10% more on average. So Google ads play a significant role in influencing which stores users choose to go to and what they do there after they get there.
“That’s why later this year, we’re also rolling out two new tools to help you measure store sales accurately and completely. The first one will allow you to directly import transaction data into Adwords to see store sales and revenue at the device and campaign level for your Search and Shopping campaigns.”
“We have a second tool where you can take advantage of Google’s third party partnerships to get store sales data with no implementation required on your end.We’ve got partnerships that cover approximately 70% of credit and debit card transactionss in the USA, and within the US, this data are just made available to you like service charm in the USA,” Ramaswamy unveiled.
“Both solutions match transactions back to Google ads in a secure and privacy safe way,” Google’s Senior Vice president of Ads and Commerce underscored.
Virgin and Wendy’s, two early adopters
Despite the official roll out of all the tools mentioned above will take place later this year, there are some brands, such as Wendy’s and Virgi, have already tested them in beta.
“Wendy’s installed Location extensions and Store visits and was able to correlate nearly a million restaurant visits to its YouTube campaigns that they run in Q4’16”, Ramaswamy said.
Using offline sales to capture a more accurate view of online performance Virgin Holidays experienced that using Search generates double the profit compared if it only looks at online KPIs. The brand also saw that driving customers to purchase in-store from paid search is also 3X more profitable than an online conversion, Google’s Senior Vice president of Ads and Commerce told the audience.
Image over the headline.- Sridhar Ramaswamy (Senior Vice President of Ads and Commerce) at the Google Marketing Next annual event 2017 held yesterday. Caption from the keynote video published by Google. © Google.
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