Foursquare introduces Sales Impact attribution features

Today, geolocation technology company Foursquare introduced Sales Impact, a new offering in its campaign attribution suite. The tool combines location and purchase insights, allowing marketers to measure the impact of multichannel campaigns on sales.

Previously, the Foursquare Attribution target used geolocation for logged-in customers to measure foot traffic to stores and other signals to estimate sales. Sales Impact adds purchase data and new metrics, so marketers can better connect the dots between campaigns and purchases.

Across the customer journey. Sales Impact lets users compare signals across the entire purchase journey during a campaign — from the impression when a customer first encounters an ad, to when the customer enters a store and makes a purchase.

New metrics. Foursquare’s Sales Impact includes 17 new metrics for detailed measurement and comparative analytics across the customer journey. Among the metrics are average basket size and sales lift.

Real-time reporting updates on campaign metrics allow marketers to change campaign strategies mid-flight based on the parts that impact purchases. Sales Impact also aims to make it easier for marketers to measure campaign ROI.

Cross-channel attribution. Foursquare Attribution measures ad impressions for campaigns across digital sites, social media, audio, CTV, linear TV and out-of-home.

Foursquare’s multitouch attribution model includes 15 billion human-verified check-ins, 2 billion transactions and 83 billion visits per year. The consumers in the company’s model have control of the collected data for privacy protection.

Why we care. Traditional in-store shopping at brick-and-mortar locations hasn’t gone away. Foursquare cites research from Capital One showing that in-store sales represented 84.5% of total retail sales in February 2024 — down only 1.01% from the previous year. And revenue from U.S. brick-and-mortar stores was up 5.14% in the same period.

As holiday campaigns ramp up in 4Q, retailers will be looking to measure the impact of those campaigns over a complex multichannel journey. The good news amid all this fragmentation is that many channels — CTV, social, mobile apps — are digital and measurable. Customers depend on mobile devices and other digital channels to make purchase decisions, including holiday gift-giving decisions. So while brick-and-mortar purchases remain high, there’s a digital component to this journey that marketers can leverage and measure.

Dig deeper: Salesforce sees a shorter, more competitive holiday season in 2024