Catalina, a digital media company focused on shopper data and personalizing discounts and offers, on Thursday launched a platform that ties online advertising to store purchases through discounts and offers, and then tracks the transaction back to advertisements that ran on a desktop or a mobile device.
The platform, Ad2Offer, is geared toward reaching consumers who do not routinely search for coupons, but will use them if those coupons come to them.
Geoff Sherman, vice president of consumer products goods solutions at Catalina, said “we’re already working on other features that will tie into this.”
Digital advertising that incorporates consumer promotions generates more than 30% higher return on ad spend than branding ads, according to a recent study by Nielsen Catalina Solutions.
In Catalina’s platform, the consumer gets targeted an advertisement based on Catalina’s shopper database filled with hundreds of millions of IDs. Depending on the brand’s goals, a target audience is built, such as consumers who never bought products from the specific brand.
The platform either ties a digital advertisement to a coupon someone can print at home or an untargeted Load-to-Card ad.
The consumer then clicks on the ad and it takes them to a landing page. Depending on the brand’s preferences, the consumer puts in their loyalty card numbers for the retailers in the network or they can print a coupon at home. They take the printed coupon to any retailer.
Several brands began testing the platform in September 2017. Sherman declined to share the brands working with the platform today, but said beverage companies, traditional stores, groceries, health and welfare, and personal care have run campaigns. “We see very high conversions after seeing the ad and clicking through the landing page” -- but Sherman could not cite specific coupon redemption rates.
Consumers who don’t want to print out the coupon to take it into the store could soon have a feature that allow them to add the digital ad into a wallet, but it will depend on how quickly retailers adopt and remove the limitations of the technology, Sherman said.
Marketers can track the redemption rates within and outside Catalina’s network. More data is available when the coupon gets redeemed within Catalina’s network of partner retailers, he said. A specific coupon code for the retail in the barcode assists to track the online ad to the offline sale.