Catalina Solves Real-Time Attribution In Physical World, Measures Out-Of-Home Sales Lift


In a move that could help marketers close the loop between out-of-home media buys and consumer purchasing behavior, consumer marketing data giant Catalina is launching a new service measuring the sales lift generated by out-of-home advertising.

The new service, launched in partnership with out-of-home media-buying platform AdQuick, covers both static out-of-home advertising, as well as digital out-of-home advertising screens, and will enable marketers and their agencies to plan, target and measure the sales lift that occurs when American consumers see and/or hear an out-of-home ad.

“[Out-of-home media] now sits at the intersection of technology and data-driven decision-making — and sales-lift measurement and addressable targeting are now key requirements for CPG brands to justify increasing their [out-of-home] ad spend,” Jim Wilson, CEO of out-of-home media-buying agency Talon America, said in a statement released with today’s announcement.

advertisement

advertisement

The goal of the new service, he added, is to enable marketers -- especially consumer packaged goods brands and retailers -- to understand, in real-time, how out-of-home advertising impressions “drive in-store sales conversions.”

Those kinds of insights, which historically have been limited mainly to real-time digital “attribution,” have been one of the analog marketing world’s “Holy Grails” for years, but in an interview, Catalina Senior Vice President-Digital Business & Strategic Partnerships Brian Dunphy said the new out-of-home service has been enabled by the ubiquity of digital device data -- especially mobile phones -- which allow Catalina to attribute ad exposures in the physical world to consumer actions in stores via its massive retail database.

Catalina currently boasts 438 million individual shopper IDs, representing 103 million U.S. households, and it can associate them with 1.9 billion device IDs.

For consumers whom Catalina cannot identify in terms of real-time behaviors -- what he described as “deterministic” -- he said the company can utilize its panel of 3.5 million consumers as a proxy to model the behaviors of “unknown” consumers. But he also conceded that there is a percentage of consumers who are not represented either in Catalina’s real-time identity universe, or its panel, and that those absolutely unknown consumers can also be factored using Catalina’s analytics.

During a preview of the new service, Lina Miranda, vice president of marketing at AdQuick, pointed out that the targeting and measurement services have different degrees of latitude.

“On the targeting front, it is not one-to-one, it is not real-time,” she explained. “On the measurement front, however, we do track out-of-home advertising exposures back to digital.”

She said the data can be used to ascertain if individual consumers are “facing in the right direction” and “have the appropriate dwell” time to qualify for an out-of-home ad exposure.

“And then we can map that exposure one-to-one with the purchase data that Catalina provides,” she explained.

1 comment about "Catalina Solves Real-Time Attribution In Physical World, Measures Out-Of-Home Sales Lift".
Check to receive email when comments are posted.
  1. John Grono from GAP Research, August 19, 2021 at 6:42 p.m.

    Sounds good.   But more detail is needed on how the attribution of 'success' is determined.   The 'last touch' model is (in the main) very deficient.

    Take this example.

    I'm thinking about getting a new TV.   I start by buying a specialist technical review magazine that scores heaps of models and I decide on two brands to consider, but not sure about which model, size and 'bells and whistles' etc.   Then whoa, I see the new SamSonic model advertised on TV.   It looks great, in fact so great I decide that is the brand I want.   I then decide that I had better go to the mall to see which SamSonic model would best fit my needs.   On the way there in my car I hear a radio ad announcing a 10% reduction at one of the retail stores that ends today - my lucky day.   My confidence in my decision rises as I see a large roadside digital billboard with MYYYY television on it.   Yep, that's the one I want in my living room.   As I walk through the mall, I see a digital panel with MYYYY television on it ... see, I was right !!!   I buy it.

    So, which of all those touchpoints should be attributed?   When the marketer doesn't include all touchpoints on their media schedule, the answer tends to be one of those measured, and it tends to favour the 'last touch'.  

Next story loading loading..