• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer, Yesterday

A closed-loop attribution solution from a managed services provider, designed for the automotive industry, is providing a link between connected TV (CTV) ad exposure and sales.

Strategus, a data-driven CTV advertising company, created SalesLink for Auto to give advertisers proof of performance through a direct link between CTV ad impressions and sales.

It is the first product to use Experian’s NAVD dataset to match impressions to auto sales for individual dealerships. This is the first time Tier 3 dealers can get this type of attribution — a claim validated and confirmed by Experian.

Snowflake’s data-collaboration capabilities and Experian Outcomes -- a measurement solution that combines identity, consumer marketing, and automotive data -- power the system.

The companies say the combination will enable precise attribution while protecting consumer privacy.

Marketers gain near real-time insights into the campaigns to provide information such as vehicle sales or dealership visits so they can optimize media strategy and prove performance by linking custom reporting to a company’s key performance indicators (KPIs) such as vehicle sales, dealership visits or high-intent web engagement.

Scott Fanelli, chief revenue officer at Edmunds, believes the product bridges the gap between media exposure and real-world action, providing a strong understanding of how CTV campaigns prompt consumers to actually take action and make purchases.

A recent Tier 2 Honda campaign used attribution powered by Experian Outcomes. The campaign drove a 133% lift in vehicle sales compared with the control group — and CTV alone delivered a 237% lift. It also led to a 3871% increase in qualified site visits and a 971% lift in dealership foot traffic.

The results show how access to real vehicle purchase data at scale gives marketers the confidence to connect ad spend to business outcomes and make smarter decisions mid-campaign, according to Strategus, which plans to expand the SalesLink platform to additional verticals, including retail and financial services.

Erik Hjermstad, vice president of product, of Experian Automotive, believes identity and data assets play a critical role in enabling closed-loop attribution at scale.

Joel Cox, Strategus co-founder and executive vice president of innovation, explained how it works. Strategus transfers millions of event-level impressions associated with its auto advertisers with identifiers that allow Experian to use its ID graph to accurately associate these exposures with households so that anyone within that household purchased a vehicle is captured.

The group has tested the system with about 260 advertisers in 150 DMAs and has matched 360,000 vehicles sales across one quarter of results.

The future of performance CTV involves the ability to bring transparent performance TV to advertisers.

Strategus ingests millions of event-level records or impressions daily via a secure Snowflake share with The Trade Desk.

Cox said Experian can conduct its ID matching when a subset of data is passed to the company via Snowflake Share. The results are shared with clients. The results are integrated in Strategus’ reporting portal, which uses Sigma Computing dashboards -- interactive visual tools that allow users to explore and analyze data from cloud data warehouses in a spreadsheet-like interface.