ZenithOptimedia, NinthDecimal Take a Crack at Offline Attribution

A partnership announced this morning between ZenithOptimedia and NinthDecimal plans to bring a new standard of omni-channel measurement and audience insights to ZenithOptimedia clients.

By going beyond traditional metrics, such as ad engagement and click-through rates, the partnership looks to enable marketers to understand actual conversions at the point of purchase — such as incremental lift in store visits. Using the platform, ZenithOptimedia clients will be able to connect mobile, online and offline data to gain deeper insights into their audience as a powerful, strategic media-planning tool.

ZenithOptimedia began discussions with NinthDecimal a year ago to see how the company could harness the power of location data and make smarter decisions on behalf of their clients, according to Yale Cohen, senior vice president of activation at ZenithOptimedia. The partnership introduces offline attribution as a major form of measurement for mobile and cross-device to accurately quantify marketing ROI, as a complement to the ZenithOptimedia’s LiveROI planning process, a dynamic, real-time approach to improving the effectiveness of advertising spend.

“That was a huge gap in our measurement and our metrics, and when we looked at the location data NinthDecimal can provide, we can start to connect device IDs and cookies and mesh cross device and then provide attribution and measurement to our media spending providing our clients with greater insight,” Cohen told Street Fight. “At ZenithOptimedia we pride ourselves as the ROI agency and we are also now the live ROI agency as we try to provide greater insight in more real time back to our clients.”

The partnership allows ZenithOptimedia to measure activity to attribute conversions and in-store visitations, whether consumers are searching via their tablet or smartphone, or seeking information from their desktop. The company can now connect a consumer’s ad exposure to their showing up in a particular store.

“One of the things about this product is now we are able to start to see live signals from our media based on location. So when they actually go into a store we are able to attribute that to an impression and we are able to start to make more real time optimizations in and out of some of the media publishers and properties,” said Cohen. “We can now take this measurement and get granular insights down to the placement and creative on a publisher level. … We’re now starting to be able to optimize our campaigns based on other metrics beyond just a click in the mobile space.”

Several of ZenithOptimedia’s clients are already using the solution and have been able to measure in-store conversions lift by audience type, location and media partner channels. More than 75 of ZenithOptimedia’s partners are either already integrated or in the process of integrating, as part of a verified partner program for this measurement product, according to NinthDecimal President David Staas. ZenithOptimedia account managers will now have real-time access to campaign results and insights via a customized, self-serve dashboard built specifically for ZenithOptimedia, enabling campaign optimization based on these new metrics.

“What happens is we are able to if we have a campaign working with 10 different publishers, we are able to see how the campaign does overall, but also how each of those individual publishers is performing on that campaign,” Staas said.

ZenithOptimedia is leveraging NinthDecimal’s LCI measurement platform and proprietary insights to reinforce advertising effectiveness and reveal a deeper understanding of physical-world behavior for clients. By going beyond traditional metrics, such as ad engagement and click-through rates, the partnership enables marketers to understand actual conversions at the point of purchase, such as incremental lift in store visits. Clients will be able to connect mobile, online, and offline data to gain deeper insights into their audience as a strategic media-planning tool.

Staas says that several aspects of the platform differentiate it from what’s already in the marketplace. One is the ability to take a very precise location signal that can help understand if someone came into a physical store (versus passing on the sidewalk, driving down the street, or going next door). The platform can also see if an ad changed the behavior of a customer, separating out a normal visit from an incremental visit.

Liz Taurasi is a contributor at Street Fight.