Foursquare Opens Up On Ad Efficacy For Merchants
In its latest attempt to inject some needed revenue into its social platform, the team from Foursquare is launching a new product that will let merchants see when an ad has led to a purchase.
Called Attribution Powered by Foursquare, the firm is opening up its data to marketers, whether or not they advertise on Foursquare or on Swarm. The data it will be coughing up will mostly be focused on location (the real world connection between mobile and physical experience has always been a main differentiating feature on Foursquare).
According to Foursquare President Steven Rosenblatt, the firm has created a representative sample of about 1.3 million people (out of 50 million or so active users) who have agreed to be part of an ongoing series of location updates with Foursquare. The firm then uses the comparison points in the data — who saw an ad, who didn't — to conduct a sort of live A/B test, with divergent data streams, to figure out when marketing gave a product a lift (as well as when an ad was an anchor).
The first public test of the new software was with Super Bowl ads, which showed that Red Lobster (thanks to a Queen Bey shoutout, no doubt) was the biggest winner of the night with a 12 percent lift in store traffic. Flipboard also noted a 12 percent incremental lift in the use of its technology.
Apart from its relative wealth of data, Foursquare is selling speed, with Rosenblatt noting that the company is able to give marketers daily insights into efficacy, as opposed to results gathered over a week.
“The consumer apps are the foundation of everything we ultimately do. We will continue to use our technology and the incredible location intelligence we have to enhance those experiences. They go hand in hand — they really do.”
