Placed Gets Closer to the “Attribution” Holy Grail

Mobile local advertising’s promise — besides hyper-targeted ad placement — has always been clearer ROI (enter John Wanamaker quote).  This has taken form in “beyond-the-click” activity like call tracking and mapping/navigation.

Location based data provider Placed has just taken this a step further with the launch of Placed Attribution. Using a combination of GPS and its “Insights” panels (think comScore for the offline world) it tracks mobile users’ visits to stores to which they previously had ad exposure.

We predicted Placed would go this route in a blog post last October about Placed Panels:

The outcome will be some powerful user behavior intel — in line with some of the triangulated data sets we’ve written about from the likes of JiWire. The pervasive nature of the tracking will make it that much more robust and uncover all kinds of new data.

One thing that comes to mind is tracking the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. Given that user behavior and proximity to real world locations can be measured, showing up at a store after seeing an ad now becomes a bit more transparent in the aggregate.

Today’s move was a natural one, and will be fulfilled through a natural partner: xAd. The mobile local ad network and leading ad tech provider is essentially the launch partner for Placed Attributions. The analytics will join xAd’s already robust mobile local campaign reporting.

A few examples of the data are below and in a sample report available here. We’ll take a deeper look at Placed Attributions in practice as it rolls out. Until then, it has the potential to join the “big data meets local” movement that we believe will accelerate mobile local advertising’s growth.