Attention marketers! The measurement gaps are closing. Google announced last week it will begin to connect online ad exposure to brick-and-mortar sales. The company claims it will be able to track about 70 percent of all credit and debit card transactions and link them to online consumer behavior.
Source: Harvard Business Review, June 1, 2017.
Marketers in the real world will benefit from better targeting, using Google’s and Facebook’s data about consumer behavior. It will allow them to target better and make their marketing budgets go further. But they need to be aware that better targeting is a short-term strategy: Once their competitors have equal access to the same targeting tools, profits from better targeting get competed away.