Foursquare can now measure TV ads’ impact on offline store visits

Marketers spend in excess of $70 billion on traditional or “linear” TV advertising in the U.S. annually. But what’s is the ROI of a TV commercial? Marketers have been trying to answer that question for years.

Now they can. Mobile location data enables marketers to measure the offline impact of both digital and traditional media. In the latter category, radio, direct mail and TV can be tracked to the store and even to the point-of-sale (POS).

Digital media can equally be tracked to the store and POS, with Google, Facebook and other platforms now increasingly making this data available to marketers.

Partnership with Inscape. There are now several companies that do TV-to-store measurement, including Placed, PlaceIQ, Simplifi and NinthDecimal. Foursquare joins them through a partnership with Inscape, which is owned by TV maker Vizio.

Foursquare, which has a consumer audience of 70 million, says that the expansion of Attribution by Foursquare enables it to measure “audience affinities, to visitor loyalty and optimal exposure frequency” for TV advertising.

‘Deterministic measurement.’ Foursquare will match TV ad exposures to mobile devices in the aggregate and Koo”deterministically measure the impact of TV advertising . . . each stage of the individual consumer journey.” While this may not fully capture the branding impact of TV, it’s a better measure of TV ad effectiveness than Nielsen ratings.

Beyond single channel measurement, Foursquare says it will do multi-touch attribution and assess the combined impact of digital, social media and search marketing. The company adds that consumers exposed to a combination of linear TV and digital drives 2X the offline store visits compared to those exposed to only one channel.

Why it matters to marketers. Location intelligence has gradually become more mainstream over the past several years. However many marketers are still not taking advantage of these capabilities to get a more accurate and complete picture of the local-store impact of their advertising, where well over 90 percent of consumer dollars are spent (products and services).

Connected TV and OTT are trackable. Adding linear TV to this mix means that almost all online and “offline” video campaigns will be measurable. Over time, the availability of this data will have a profound impact on TV ad planning and budgeting.

What to read next:
• FAQ: Addressable TV & the convergence of digital video and TV ad buying
• Addressable TV from the media buyer’s perspective: What’s hype vs. reality
• Traditional TV rolls with the times, remains a viable entertainment channel

About The Author

Greg Sterling

Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land. He writes a personal blog, Screenwerk, about connecting the dots between digital media and real-world consumer behavior. He is also VP of Strategy and Insights for the Local Search Association. Follow him on Twitter or find him at Google+.