Understanding what consumers do when they are in the real world is taking ROI measurement well beyond TV’s traditional “eyeballs” metrics for advertising effectiveness. In fact, more and more brands are embracing foot traffic measurement as a more reliable and actionable metric for calculating the impact of advertising, especially for omni-channel marketing campaigns. Foot traffic measurement is increasingly becoming the go-to metric, enabling TV advertising to demonstrate its value in the digital era. However, before leveraging foot traffic measurement technology for TV campaigns, there are three key questions every marketer should be asking:
First, what type of insights are you looking to glean from foot traffic measurement? For example, are you looking to understand which networks were the most effective in driving additional visits to your locations or are you testing which creative messaging worked best as it relates to new store visitors? Maybe you are looking to test the efficiency of different dayparts or the value product placement. Whatever it might be, defining your goals upfront is important when deciding what measurement technology to use.
Second, it’s also important to understand the data used for this measurement, not only where it’s coming from, but also how it’s being connected to TV exposure. Understanding where the consumer data is originating and how this data is being matched to a specific household/device is very important to understand what the measurement is actually providing.
For instance, how is consumer location data connected to set-top box data or streaming TV services? Is TV exposure matched to an individual, household, or neighborhood? Basically, you should be asking yourself if the methodology is sound and conducted on a statistically significant scale.
Finally, can the measurement provider deliver unified metrics, comparing the effect of digital, mobile and other advertising platforms across the same consumer profiles? This is incredibly important in the new world of omni-channel advertising. As advertisers inevitably start to unify around more reliable metrics like cost-per-visit, marketers must fully understand what they mean (and the technology behind them) to realize their full value.
By Brian Kilmer
