Datalogix, which is known for connecting digital media with offline sales impact, will begin to tie ad viewability to in-store ROI via a partnership with comScore, unveiled Wednesday.
Marketers will be able to combine comScore’s panel and Census-based data, as well as its impression-level reporting inclusive of “90 of the top 100 properties across the Web,” with Datalogix’s offline data assets, said Serge Matta, comScore’s CEO.
ComScore is integrating its validated Campaign Essentials (vCE) tool with Datalogix’s offline measurement portfolio, including DLX ROI.
Although the partnership isn’t exclusive (Datalogix has long-partnered with Facebook on conversion tracking), the key differentiator here is the viewability aspect, said Datalogix CEO Eric Roza.
“When you overlay ROI against viewability, you can start to [look at things like] maybe a publisher did a really good job with viewability, but didn’t necessarily drive in-store sales,” Roza said. “Determining whether there are more sales when the impressions were viewable or not” opens up a number of insights for advertisers and publishers.
The partnership, Roza added, isn’t relegated to paid media campaigns, since comScore embeds site tags across the Web.
“Say I’m a retailer that sells 95% of my stuff offline and I’ve got a vibrant ecommerce presence, but [also] brick and mortar stores,” Roza explained. “They’re going to see that when people went to this or that part on my website, they were much more likely to buy product in my store, even if they don’t buy online. There are a lot more derivatives that will result from this work.”
Datalogix was attracted to vCE because it had a comprehensive audience measurement solution with viewability built in. The ability to stitch together demographics like age and gender with ad viewability and in-store sales was a key value proposition, Roza said.
“The goal is to do this in an automated way, so that when clients tag a campaign, they’ll be able to self-service it,” Matta said. “It’s not there yet, but we’ll work on that together with Datalogix.”
Matta alluded to the potential for a tag-less solution in the future, “whereby you can initiate a campaign and within seconds you can start to see vCE results and within 30-60 days begin to measure the effectiveness online and off.”
This deal isn’t comScore’s first foray into the offline arena; it also partners with Batanga Media, Epsilon and Acxiom. And Facebook uses Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings (OCR) paired with Datalogix to track ad effectiveness. Though “we’ve had partnerships with Nielsen going back five or six years, we haven’t worked with them on the OCR front,” Roza said. But, “we’re a pretty open system, so I wouldn’t rule things out like that in the future.”
