Google’s Store Visit Measurement Tool Tracks Consumer Behavior

A new Google AdWords tool will allow advertisers to have more insight into what products drive consumers into brick and mortar operations. Marketers can access this tool in the analytics section of Google AdWords. Google has added a tool called “store visit measurement” to its “estimated total conversions” tool. The intent is for businesses to know how their customer behaves in regard to their advertising. With the holiday shopping season being an important one for industries such as retail automotive, its certainly good timing for an upgrade in Google metrics.

The “store visit measurement” tool will build off of the “estimated total conversions tool.” With the ETC tool, Google can track a customer from clicking on an ad to making the purchase on the company website, as long as they are signed into Google. This helps to make the connection of whether or not they purchased an item on their phone or waited to do so on their desktop computer. With the new “store visit measurement” tool, advertisers can get a feel for how effective their ads are at drawing consumers into their stores. This isn’t yet exact and doesn’t involve direct location tracking; rather it’s based on aggregate data already available. According an official Google statement on the subject, “We never provide anyone’s actual location to advertisers. Instead, store visits are estimates based on aggregated, anonymized data from a sample set of users that have turned on Location History.”

Do you feel that this tool will help you with your digital marketing? Does it interest you to know roughly how your ads are drawing people to your store? What potential do you see for dealerships to employ this type of technology during the next five years?