DailyDOOH

Gail Chiasson, North American Editor

Linkable Networks has officially launched the Linkable Shopper Attribution Platform, enabling retailers, for the first time, to directly measure the impact of their digital media on in-store sales based on actual consumer transactions.

A retailer’s in-store shopper data has previously been limited to test and control or panels for measurement.

With the introduction of Linkable Shopper Attribution Platform, retailers no longer have to wonder what digital and social media investment is driving in-store sales.

Measuring the purchase behavior of 180 million cardholders in the U.S., the Linkable Shopper Attribution Platform gives brands and retailers a new way to incentivize and reward consumers for purchasing specific products in-store, where 93% of all retail sales still occur.

While e-commerce has been growing at a rapid pace, many retailers have struggled with driving in-store sales growth. And with increased competition from Amazon and direct-fulfillment by manufacturers, retailers need a more effective way to increase foot traffic in-store where the average customer spend is typically higher than online.

The Linkable Shopper Attribution Platform helps retailers instantly promote incentives that convert the 71% of shoppers, who are researching price, coupons and reviews while in-store, into buyers. While the industry has found the ability to measure digital media’s impact on e-commerce to be easy, Linkable has solved the digital to in-store attribution problem.

While this Linkable Shopper Attribution Platform is available immediately regarding mobile and digital one-line, tests are currently underway for making it available for digital out-of-home media.

“This the holy grail,” says Mike Di Franza, Linkable Network president. “This is what has been missing with digital out-of-home. There hasn’t been a way to tie a viewer seeing an ad to his or her actual purchase. With this, if a consumer is exposed to an ad, they can text eg. 1-2-3-4 and it links to the credit card. Then we know it drills down to the actual purchase.

“This will be a natural extension for DOOH, and will give the industry the chance to really prove itself. If it works as we believe it will – and we are currently doing full testing on this – Linkable will roll out for the DOOH industry in Q2, 2016.”

De Franza says that the company is also looking at how the Linkable Shopper Attribution Platform might also be activated with other media, as well.

Beyond the benefit to retailers and brands, the Linkable Shopper Attribution Platform addresses the needs of digital-savvy consumers – especially the coveted millennial demographic. A recent commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Linkable Networks found that millennials have seen traditional paper coupons and current digital coupons experiences as too complicated to use. However, 64% of millennials surveyed said they would visit a new retailer if they received a card-linked offer. The Linkable Shopper Attribution Platform allows consumers to receive an all-digital card-linked offer redemption – with no printing or promotion codes to remember – becoming a seamless part of the customer experience as it occurs automatically upon purchase.

“The biggest shift in digital media right now is the widespread focus on adopting programmatic solutions,” says Tom Burgess, founder and CEO of Linkable Networks. “The Linkable Shopper Attribution Platform was built with a simple idea in mind: brands and retailers need a better way to see return on their digital ad spend in-store. Also, consumers benefit by receiving the offers they want at the product level without having to cut out or search for an online coupon. Our platform provides the measurement for programmatic that retailers are demanding.”

The SaaS-based Linkable Shopper Attribution Platform leverages the ubiquitous reach of the more than 180 million credit and debit cardholders in the U.S. by directly saving, or linking, offers and coupons to a consumer’s card account. As pioneers in the industry, Linkable has enabled any type of digital media to leverage the unique capabilities intrinsic to card-linked offers. In addition to being able to support whole-store offers and rewards, the Shopper Attribution Platform includes three industry firsts:

• SKU-level offers and rewards: Core to the Linkable platform is the ability for retailers, and their brand partners, to create digital offers that include or exclude specific items, categories, departments and locations. This allows a retailer’s vendor brand to directly attribute their media dollars to in-store spending through their retail channels.
• Coupon anti-stacking: Linkable prevents the ability for consumers to ‘stack’ digital and printed offers in a single transaction solving a big concern of retailers and brands as the industry shifts from print to digital coupons and promotions.
• Universal data connect: Linkable connects directly with the card networks, select processors or the retailer’s data center to provide multiple layers of data redundancy for card-linked offers.

The Linkable Shopper Attribution Platform is now available for mobile and online and is the foundation for Linkable’s three solutions:

• Linkable Promotions: All-digital coupons or rewards – store-wide or item-level – that are linked to a consumer’s credit or debit card and redeem automatically without paper, a promotion code or another app.
• Linkable Media: In-store attribution of a retailer’s or brand’s digital media based on consumer purchases.
• Linkable Loyalty: Automatically measures and aggregates purchases across any national retailer for use by Loyalty companies to reward and track consumer spending.

Since 2011, Linkable Networks has been nose-down building a scalable platform that provides brands and retailers the ability to engage, reward and incentivize their consumers directly and across any channel – online, mobile and in-store. Linkable Networks pioneered the concept of card-linked-offers and have taken it to the next level. Both its self-service and SaaS-based platforms enable the creation of actionable ads, coupons, offers, promotions, rebates and more that let you influence and reward consumers no matter where they shop.

In 2001, Burgess, the CEO, founded Third Screen Media, the world’s first mobile advertising network. Acquired in 2007 by AOL, it set the standard for wireless advertising and proved Burgess’s ability to deliver strong returns for investors. He previously served as president of Internet portal CollegeLink.com, and as founder and CEO of both 9th Square and Echomedia.

DiFranza, an inventor and new media entrepreneur, is the founder and former president and CEO of Captivate Network. He was previously director of Eastern U.S., Canada and Latin America at Mentor Graphics and was the founding chairman of the Digital Place-based Advertising Association (DPAA).. Mike also serves as a strategic advisor to several early- and growth-stage companies.

John Caron is the Chief Marketinng Officer of Linkable, bringing his entrepreneurial and innovative instincts to the company from 20 years in the media and technology services spaces. He previously led Catalina’s marketing initiatives, joining the company through its acquisition of Modiv Media. He was the driver behind both company’s repositioning, and has been a powerful force behind the growth of many other companies as well. Prior to Modiv, John held marketing leadership positions at Gartner, ATG (now Oracle), FactPoint (now GeoTrust), NuMega (now Compuware) and Open Environment (now Borland).

Other executives in the company include: Rick Wessels, senior vice-president of business development; Ed Wogan, senior vice-president of sales development; Chip Correra, chief technology officer; L. Jeff Jensen, executive vice-president, (general manager, Omnyverse) and former president and COO of the Adspace Digital Mall Network; and Cassandra Kral-Dillon, vice-president of finance.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 8th, 2015 at 23:17 @011 and is filed under DailyDOOH Update. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.