Dive Brief:
- Digital advertisers want to track ad performance all the way to a sale, and Facebook might actually be close to offering a solution to marketers.
- The social media giant is conducting tests with a brick-and-mortar point-of-sale system to connect ads served on mobile devices to in-store sales.
- Facebook also just made it easier for Page administrators to find performance metrics by placing those stats on the Page and News Feed level.
Dive Insight:
Digital advertisers have access to a lot of performance data on their marketing efforts, but one key metric – tracking ad performance across platforms, including sales conversions in physical stores – has proven particularly difficult. Enter a possible solution: Facebook is running tests with a brick-and-mortar retailer that traces ads running in third-party mobile apps to sales made in those stores.
David Jakubowski, Facebook's head of ad tech, told Ad Age, "We actually connected their point-of-sale [system] and were able to connect it through – just like with one location with one little experiment. They were able to show there was a 13% lift in sales as a result of a whole bunch of this mobile activity."
The social network is able to combine its large user base and its Atlas ad server it bought from Microsoft a couple of years ago.
In other recent Facebook news, it made life easier for Page administrators by placing ad reach and click metrics on the Page and News Feed level, and it also now sells autoplay video ads via third-party apps.
