• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, September 20, 2016

Broadening its effort to bridge the divide between the virtual and real world, Facebook is expanding its dynamic ads to brick-and-mortar retail.

Among other benefits, this change should make it easier for businesses to customize creative for different store locations based on local product availability, pricing or promotions.

As such, mobile campaigns can now highlight products that are currently in stock in the stores that are geographically closest to consumers.

Facebook knows as well as its business partners just how important it is to connect consumers’ mobile and in-store experiences. Indeed, 49% of in-store purchases are now influenced by digital interactions -- over half of which take place on mobile.

To support this shift, Facebook rolled out new capabilities for marketers to drive foot traffic to stores, in June.

Just a few months later, the social giant is now reporting over one million store visits per day in 100,000 locations, and a growing number of retailers using its Offline Conversions API to verify that people seeing their ads are making in-store purchases.

Facebook on Tuesday also announced a “store visits objective,” which builds on the geo-targeting and ad format features of the local awareness ad solution and introduces store visits as the primary reporting metric and a new optimization model.

In theory, store visit optimization helps brands reach people more likely to visit their stores, in order to decrease the reported cost-per-store-visit.

The objective is expected to roll out to all ad partners, over the next month.