comScore and xAd (a location-based mobile ad network) are beginning to measure how effective xAd’s mobile campaigns are for driving in-store visits.
Today, the companies introduced a new tool called comScore Location Lift in xAd, which combines comScore’s campaign validation and methodology with xAd’s technology to let advertisers measure reach and frequency to see how campaigns affect foot traffic.
“We’re excited to help advertisers close the loop between ad exposure and in-store conversions through this new partnership,” comScore svp of advertising Duncan Trigg said in a statement. “comScore Location Lift in xAd will provide the cross-media comparable insights brands need to understand how they’re reaching their target audiences across screens, and whether those impressions converted into actual physical store visits.”
According to chief product officer Shashi Seth, xAd already works with a number of third parties to measure campaign effectiveness. The partnership is global, and while it’s beginning on mobile, the plan is to add cross-screen measurement sometime later this year. Tools to track revenue are also in the works.
Measuring how digital campaigns impact visits has increasingly been a point of focus for a number of tech companies. Facebook and Google also both recently upped their abilities to measure in-store visits. This month, Facebook began letting stores track visits and total sales per location. However, Google’s been tracking in-store visits since 2014 and in May added local store ads to Google Maps for the first time
“The real differentiation between us and everybody else is that for Facebook and Google, this is a checkbox that says, ‘Hey we also track people into stores,'” Seth said in an interview. “But this is the core of what we do and I’m very proud to say we do it a scale and the scientific technology that is unprecedented.”
In February, xAd began letting marketers buy keyword-based mobile ads using data based on 100 million locations. The tool is based on xAd’s Blueprints technology, which lets marketers target users based on where they are at a given moment.