At BIA/Kelsey NATIONAL: Google's Brendon Kraham

Brendon Kraham is Google’s Director of Emerging Ad Sales and Product Strategy, and his job, essentially is as “Building and scaling Google’s next billion ad products.”

Speaking this morning a BIA/Kelsey’s NATIONAL conference here in Dallas, Kraham talked about the progression in leveraging the estimated 150 daily smart phone “micro moments” into sales. The micro moments Kraham spoke off cover the gamut from communication to entertainment to shopping. “These are intent-rich moments,” Kraham said.

Mobile is fundamentally changing how consumers engage with retail locations. Kraham cited data shows that 93 percent of retail sales still happens in physical locations. Yet store traffic is down 55 percent, while spending per customer is up. This suggests that consumers are doing a lot more ahead of time to plan their purchases, then are showing up to complete the transaction. It’s a big shift in how consumers are interacting with retail. Less browsing, more buying.

Tapping into these “micro-moments” to drive in store purchases involves three key elements, Kraham said.

1. Target consumers at the right location (the key here is to bid differentially).
2. Dive them to your business with right ad (for example based on proximity, intent).
3. Measure the offline impact (reporting visits and transactions).

On the third point, Kraham said Google is making strides toward connecting searches to store visits, which are a proxy for transactions. Google is also working with big brands to capture in store inventory.