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Google Connects Display Ads To Store Visits And TV Ads To Brand Searches

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As the mobile phone has become nearly ubiquitous, consumers paradoxically have become harder for marketers to reach, at least in a coherent way. Now consumer attention is split among innumerable apps, websites and devices that still include computers, television and, of course, physical stores.

On Monday morning at the annual Advertising Week gathering in New York City, Google will introduce a number of ways to “close the loop” between television and digital ads, between digital ads and in-store sales and across devices. They’re the latest ways the search advertising giant is continuing to try to make display ads more effective at a time when banners and video ads are increasingly under fire for a perceived lack of effectiveness.

“This is going to enable us to track the additional activities that display ads can drive,” Brad Bender, vice president of product management for Google display and video advertising, said in an interview.

For one, Google will extend its Brand Lift service, which lets marketers know how YouTube campaigns affect traditional brand metrics such as awareness and purchase intent, to TV campaigns. That’s intended to show marketers how TV ads can boost brand searches on both Google and YouTube. Google says early tests show that YouTube generates almost twice the number of searches per ad impression than TV, though in a sense, it’s not surprising that a digital ad will result in more searches than a TV ad.

“Consumers are way out ahead of advertisers on this,” said Bender.

Google also has been gradually providing more ways for marketers to determine how online ads affect visits to physical stores. It has figured out that 30% of people who visit a relevant app or website on their phones buy something within 24 hours in a store.

So now, the company will introduce “location extensions” and store visits measurement for the Google Display Network, its collection of more than 2 million partner websites that run its display ads. As consumers visit sites or use apps, marketers can reach them with ads that provide an address, directions and photos.  Home Depot used location extensions on ads sent to consumers browsing on phones near its most popular stores and got an eight-times-over return on its ad spending, according to Google.

Not least, Google will debut the ability for marketers to “remarket” across devices for the Google Display Network and Google’s DoubleClick Bid Manager, its automated or “programmatic” ad buying system. Remarketing is a method of showing an ad to people who recently visited a website or app as a way to try to get them to buy what they were browsing for. Google’s new form of remarketing means brands can tell the same story across the devices in a more coherent way.

The new services will roll out in the next few months, before the holiday shopping season.

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