Google’s Store Visits Tool tracks online interactions and their contribution to walking in store, giving a greater understanding of the multi-channel.
First, by using machine learning, Google has expanded the Store Visits Tool capabilities to measure store visits at scale including visits that happen in multi-story malls or dense cities like Tokyo, Japan, São Paulo, Brazil where many business locations are situated close together.
Google has also introduced a special format on YouTube’s TrueView ad platform which will now allow advertisers to measure from a video impression to a store visit.
“For advertisers who want more detail and granularity, they can link their loyalty data to Google ad clicks,” Jerry Dischler, vice-president of product management at Google said.
These new ways of using data on Google should be GDPR compliant, Dischler said. “We have ensured that these solutions are all privacy safe with completely anonymised results.”
In the US, Google is taking its Store Visits Tool even further with store sales measurement at device and campaign levels. This will enable advertisers to measure in-store revenue in addition to store visits delivered by search and shopping ads, Sridhar Ramaswamy, Google’s senior vice-president of ads and commerce wrote in a blogpost announcing these updates.
If a retailer collects email information at the point of sale for a loyalty programme, they can import store transactions into AdWords or use Google’s third-party partnerships which capture about 70% of credit and debit card transactions in the US. After opting in, store sales will be reported on AdWords.
Going forward, store sales measurement will be expanded on a market-by-market basis based on partnerships, Dischler said.
