In my days in large brand marketing online, I had the excellent career development opportunity to work with the traditional advertising team. We constantly were trying to come up with ways to crack the online/offline nut. The ultimate question was, how many online impressions does it take to generate a store visit and ultimately a purchase offline? We tried numerous math calculations with a vast array of assumptions including in-store foot traffic conversion rates, online ad CPM and click through calcs, etc. We tried offering unique coupons that were known to be only distributed online so if we saw a coupon redemeed, we knew it was electronically driven. We spent many meetings and team hours trying to come up with the best way to advertise online and measure success offline. I recently ran across a patent filing that has the potential to break through the online/offline barrier. Its a simple concept but if the technology works, it could be BIG - its called "pay per visit" advertising and that visit is an OFFLINE visit.
I did some research on the team behind the idea. Apparently a few ex-Amazoners have gotten together to form a company called Pelago. They have reportedy patented technology that purports to tie together an online impression viewed on your PC or your wireless device to an instore visit. The premise is that your cell phone can be tracked via GPS or Bluetooth/RFID and if you had previously been exposed to an ad, they bridge that gap.
Now obviously there is a large array of privacy issues that can come from such a premise. If Pelago can get over this barrier then they may be sitting at the edge of a major platform that would attract the attention of billion dollar offline brand marketing budgets. This is a place that there is a large amount of $ itching to be spent so this bears watching!
