Store Visits Metric Helps Google AdWords Users Measure Offline ROI

After brands like Sephora and Buffalo Wild Wings saw success with "Store Visits," Google has opened up the feature to Australian and Canadian advertisers, while also creating a new Best Practices Guide.

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April 09, 2015 Categories

As more people read up about products on the Internet before purchasing them – 88 percent of shoppers do this, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers research – businesses are increasingly measuring the offline impact from their online ads.

In December, Google launched the Store Visits metric, an update to Estimated Total Conversions in AdWords. The enhancement, which is extrapolated based on aggregated and anonymized data from a sample of users who have turned on Location History, made it easier for advertisers to measure phone calls, in-store purchases, and cross-device conversions.

By incorporating store visits data as part of search ads performance, retailers are finding four times as many conversions overall and 10 times as many on mobile devices. Four months in, Sephora discovered that mobile leads to 18 percent more store visits than desktop. As a result, the cosmetics brand optimized its mobile-bidding strategy and now sees 25 percent more ROI, compared with when e-commerce sales were the only measurement point.

Similarly, Google’s insights led Buffalo Wild Wings to adjust its bidding strategy and realize an 84 percent lift in conversions.

To help other brands achieve similar results, Google created a new Best Practices Guide focused on enhancing online ads, improving targeting and bidding, and measuring offline value. Additionally, Store Visits became available in Australia and Canada yesterday, with eight more countries to follow.

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