Advanced Online Targeting Increases In-Store Sales Lift

Demonstrating the power of highly-targeted, online advertising to drive brick-and-mortar sales, a massive multi-brand study has found that retailers targeting consumers via premium Web sites saw in an 18 percent in-store sales lift versus non-targeted shoppers.

Conducted by consumer and market intelligence firm SymphonyIRI Group Inc. and audience marketplace developer Legolas Media, the study involved three consumer package goods (CPG) brands, each delivering 50 million rich media and banner impressions during a three-month period.

Testing multiple ad campaign strategies, the two companies found targeting based on a consumer’s prior purchase history to be the most effective ad strategy. Consumers who were regular users of a brand resulted in more than a 48 percent in-store sales lift, with a 23 percent lift for buyers of competitive brands. Other strategies tested included hyperlocal, demographic, and psychographic targeting.

“By pairing the targeting statistics of our audience ‘futures’ marketplace with the sales results determined by SymphonyIRI’s Consumer Network, we’ve been able to prove that premium online advertising can drive brick-and-mortar sales by both increasing brand loyalty and gaining new customers from competitors,” said Ran Cohen, cofounder and president, Legolas Media.

For the study, campaigns were planned, bought and delivered via the Legolas Media “futures” marketplace, which allows advertisers to optimize guaranteed direct buys on premium publishers. The campaigns were measured through SymphonyIRI’s Consumer Network panel, which includes data on shopping behavior from more than 86,000 consumers. Campaign effectiveness was determined in terms of actual spend per household and actual value per sale versus the general population and was then compared with the same period a year earlier to determine impact on sales lift.

“Using the ongoing research methodology we developed with Legolas, participating brands and their agencies were able to see the impact and correlation that online ads were having on their offline sales—and to make mid-campaign adjustments to further drive store sales,” said Srishti Gupta, EVP, new media solutions, SymphonyIRI.

The SymphonyIRI and Legolas partnership allows CPG marketers to create customized audience segments, use them immediately in transparent, guaranteed, scalable and safe advertising buys of premium inventory, and then optimize their marketing campaigns on the fly in real time.

SymphonyIRI Group, formerly named Information Resources, Inc., provides solutions for driving revenue and profit growth in CPG, retail and healthcare companies. Its two families of solutions include Core IRI solutions for market measurement and Symphony Advantage solutions for enabling new growth opportunities in marketing, sales, shopper marketing and category management.

Legolas Media has created an innovative online advertising marketplace designed to empower premium branding efforts with audience targeting technology.