Dive Brief:

• Facebook announced Tuesday that it is adding new measurement tools to its campaigns that allow advertisers to see how many people visit a store after seeing a Facebook campaign, optimize ads based on store visits, and analyze results across stores and regions to plan future campaigns.

• Retailers using the new tools can compare transaction data from their stores to Facebook's Ads Reporting to track how effective their ads are in influencing in-store purchases. Partnerships with point-of-sale systems like Square and Marketo, plus capabilities that leverage GPS, beacons, WiFi and cell towers with brick-and-mortar locations are enabling the feature, according to TechCrunch. 

• In a challenge to Google, Facebook also said it’s launching a native store locator to help people find and navigate to the nearest store location within the ad format.

Dive Insight:

These new features are part of Facebook’s ongoing effort to give marketers ad view and foot traffic insights that rival online data capabilities. The chance to measure how effective ads are in driving brick-and-mortar sales has been somewhat of a holy grail for retailers, who realize that many customers are visiting multiple channels in their shopping journey. 

"This is one of the biggest partner challenges that exist in a digital and mobile world," Maz Sharafi, Facebook's director of monetization product marketing, told Ad Week. "Consumers are increasingly spending their time in mobile and online, but transactions are happening everywhere."

Facebook’s store location feature, making it easy for consumers to find store location information in its ads, catches it up to Google, which recently unveiled new local search ads and promoted pins that might show up in users' driving or walking routes in Google Maps. But Facebook's Offline Conversions API may go beyond catch-up, eMarketer analyst Yoram Wurmser told AdAge. 

"From what I've seen, this new Offline Conversion API brings Facebook up at least to what Google has been offering, but probably goes beyond it,” he said. “By virtue of the behavioral and interest data it gets from its social networks (FB and Instagram), the additional insights about store traffic are likely beyond what Google can offer. So, I think it's going to be pretty attractive to retailers."

Facebook showed that these tools have already become attractive to some retailers in a recent post. According to Argentinean electronics retailer Fravega, the retailer was recieving $2.20 in revenue in its brick-and-mortar store from Facebook Ads. French retailer E.Leclerc said that 12% of its Facebook ad clicks led to a store visit in seven days.