Facebook developed its offline sale check
Facebook Atlas, the social platform's ad server is getting a few extremely useful updates.
Offline Actions lets Atlas-using marketers upload their own point-of-sale data and view it alongside their ad campaigns. This feature will likely appeal to brick-and-mortar retailers and packaged-goods brands.
The measurement-oriented product will, supposedly, let advertisers know more clearly if their Facebook Atlas campaigns - that encompass ads via numerous publishers and websites - are driving offline sales. Until this development, adding this sort of sales data was only available to marketers when their promos ran on Facebook's website or mobile app.
In addition to the above, Facebook is offering a metric called "Path to Conversion" to help marketers understand whether ads on desktop or smartphones/tablets drove a digital sale. For instance, it could compare two mobile ads versus a mobile ad followed up by a desktop promo.
"It provides insight into how real people see ads across multiple devices," explained Brian Boland, the leader of Facebook’s Advertising Technology section.
This updates package is also designed to allow marketers to optimize their Facebook Atlas campaigns before launching those.
The social giant's additions are part of a clear trend in activity on the digital-offline measurement front. For instance, two weeks ago, Foursquare and a few tech vendors debuted products that aim to tackle the sales-attribution question.
Facebook Atlas will also begin offering video ads by the end of March.
Brian Boland and his team ran multiple rounds of research in the past several months. Here's some of the insights, per Facebook:
Carmaker Mini found that 30 % of all conversions started on desktop, but ultimately converted thanks to ads on mobile devices.
KLM uncovered 24 % more sales conversions with the path-to-conversion feature.
The same metric helped fashion retailer Yoox discover a 29 % lift being able to attribute sales to channels.
