Facebook Debuts Store Visit and Sales Measures

Facebook has launched three new solutions intended to drive people to brick and mortar shops and measure the number of shop visits and in-store sales following a Facebook mobile ad campaign.

Last year, the social network introduced features to enable businesses with multiple locations to create ads for each shop dynamically, within a single campaign. The new 'Native Shop Locator' allows users to navigate to the nearest shop location, without leaving an ad or app. The tool shows a map of all the locations the business has nearby, and people can click on the map in the advert to view information about those nearby locations.

Another new metric, 'Shop Visits', is based on information from people with location services enabled on their phone. Advertisers can see how many people came into their shop after seeing a Facebook campaign, and optimize advert creativity, delivery and targeting based on shop visits. They can then analyse results across shops and regions. In addition, advertisers can connect transactions that take place in store or over the phone to their adverts, using Facebook's new 'Off-line Conversions API', which allows businesses to match transaction data from their customer database or point-of-sale system to adverts. Through the tool, users can see real-time results as transactions occur in store and over the phone, while gaining demographic insights about people who purchase.

In a statement, Facebook said the new features give businesses a way 'to encourage and measure foot traffic and in-store sales, giving them more power and information to improve campaign performance'.

Web site: www.facebook.com .