Adometry and LiveRamp Meld to Offer Offline-Online Data

Direct response marketers spend a lot of time trying to analyze whether their online ad campaigns are getting people to click and buy. But linking these efforts to transactions that happen on the sales floor remains difficult.

Analytics firms and digital marketing agencies alike are scrambling to help them, including ad analytics firm Adometry. The Austin, Texas-based company recently announced a partnership with LiveRamp, a company that focuses on getting offline data, such as lists of car purchasers, into online systems.

“LiveRamp allows us to better see the relationship between digital media and conversions offline, giving us a more complete picture,” said Paul Pellman, CEO of Adometry, in an interview.

LiveRamp assigns data from a company’s customer relationship management (CRM) system to a cookie that uniquely identifies the user but strips away any personally identifiable information (PII). The usable data might include information on when the product was purchased, the buyer’s age and location, or what model they purchased. That data can then be used by companies for targeted email or online display campaigns, for example.

The two companies say that in particular these integrated tools will help companies in the automotive, financial services, insurance and multi-channel retail businesses, which derive a large percentage of their sales offline.

Adometry’s analytics tools aim to show companies which digital touch points -email, display ads, branded or non-branded search -are working best in driving conversions. Its algorithms also seek to rebalance what Adometry sees as a flawed method of analysis still used by many companies, in which the last point clicked on before purchase is assigned all the value in making the sale, according to Pellman. Recalibrating what is really working has an impact on future buying decisions, he said.

Booyah Advertising, a digital agency that serves customers such as Dish Network, Blockbuster, Vail Resorts and Gap, is one Adometry customer planning to implement the new features. “Our clients expect us to track every dollar invested to a dollar of revenue generated,” said Troy Lerner, President of Booyah. Since incorporating Adometry’s software earlier this year, agency clients now have real-time access to data that used to take hours of painstaking work by company statisticians to produce, he said.

But Lerner conceded that getting clients on board with opening up their own CRM databases could be a bit of a sell. “It will be a more challenging integration getting senior management to sign off on,” he said. But he feels that customers will soon see the advantages. “Every improvement in tracking gives you a short window in the ‘arms race’….that could mean an 18-month jump on your competitors,” he noted.