NinthDecimal & TiVo Announce Partnership To Bring Offline Store-Visit Metrics To TV

Mobile devices are bringing digital analytics and targeting capabilities to all kinds of media, including “offline” traditional advertising, such as out-of-home, direct mail and television. Because you can associate many types of media with mobile devices and follow the movements of people in the real world, you can see how exposure to formerly unmeasurable channels impacts offline behavior.

This is incredibly valuable information that marketers have not had until recently — especially TV advertisers. This morning, NinthDecimal and TiVo announced a new partnership intended to measure the impact of TV on in-store visits.

The offering is being called LCI TV, and it marks another significant partnership for NinthDecimal as a measurement and media-planning platform. Not long ago, the company announced a major relationship with ZenithOptimedia, which is using the former’s technology and data to measure the offline impact of digital (and eventually traditional) media broadly across its client base.

The new partnership with TiVo will enable an assessment of the true impact of TV on real-world commerce, where the large majority of conversions take place. NinthDecimal associates mobile devices with IP addresses (and real addresses) to measure the effect of all types of ad exposures on store visits. It can also track cross-platform activity accordingly. NinthDecimal President David Staas is quick to point out that the data is collected and analyzed in a way that makes it anonymous and privacy-compliant.

NinthDecimal is not the only company measuring this “online to offline” (O2O) consumer behavior pattern. Other companies, including xAd, Factual, PlaceIQ, Skyhook, Verve and Placed, offer solutions that seek to do the same thing, with varying methodologies.

PlaceIQ also has a TV-to-real-world measurement program in place with Rentrak, which just merged with comScore. Nielsen, which still uses largely outdated methods to measure the impact of video programming on audiences, will either need to buy one of these companies or eventually be disrupted as advertisers opt for new metrics.

In addition to tracking offline impact, the new NinthDecimal-TiVo partnership brings digital media-like optimization and A/B testing to conventional TV advertising, as well as retargeting across devices and platforms. The data will also be used for subsequent ad-budget allocation and media planning purposes.

Google and Facebook are also committed to measuring O2O impact. In fact, the range of companies and methods now tracking O2O activity has created momentum that should result in a new, industry wide “store visits” metric.

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+.