The golden question of advertising: Are those dollars spent on digital advertising efforts truly helping influence consumer behavior? Thanks to Visa's latest partnership with Oracle, merchants can finally get some answers. Introducing Visa Advertising Solutions, a suite of products that allows merchants to measure a consumer's response to advertising campaigns and then use those insights to get the most bang for their buck.
By leveraging digital advertising data from Oracle's Data Cloud and aggregated and de-identified purchase data from Visa Advertising Solutions, companies can strategically tailor their campaigns to different audiences and serve up the most relevant offers to each. And spenders don't need to sweat it - all of this data is completely anonymous, so no personal or individual information is ever revealed.
"Successful marketing efforts depend on rich data to measure the results and effectiveness of each channel," said Mike Lemberger, senior vice president, loyalty and data solutions at Visa. "Combined, Visa and Oracle have unique and powerful assets to help merchants connect the dots between advertising spend and business results - the holy grail of any marketing program."
So, how does it work? Let's say a retailer wants to promote a seasonal sale. They'll start by selecting a target audience based on Visa Audience's aggregated, past-purchase behavior data and supplemented with a mix of demographic data from Oracle Data Cloud. A digital ad is then delivered to the target audience using the Oracle ID Graph across multiple channels and devices. Now this is where Visa Ad Measurement comes in, offering insight into whether or not a Visa purchase was made online or in-store as a result of the merchant's digital ad views. These results help indicate the ad's effectiveness, allowing marketers to adjust the offer, creative and/or channels accordingly.
"Visa Advertising Solutions and Oracle Data Cloud are empowering merchants to find their customers online and measure the results of their ad campaigns on actual sales," said Eric Roza, senior vice president of the Oracle Data Cloud.
Roza goes on to point out that this allows everyone from restaurants to retailers to improve the effectiveness of their advertising by establishing a direct link between digital ads and actual sales, whether these occurred online or in traditional brick-and-mortar locations.
Several national merchants piloted the Oracle Data Cloud/Visa Advertising Solutions in 2015 by measuring how advertisements placed on Twitter improved online and offline ROI. Commenting on the successful pilot, Ali Jafari, vice president, partnerships at Twitter, said, "Visa Advertising Solutions helped merchants close the loop between online campaigns and offline sales, so they could measure the impact Twitter advertising campaigns had on offline sales. We're excited that advertisers have the ability to measure their ROI through Visa Advertising Solutions in a way that can strengthen their bottom lines."
Visa Advertising Solutions is available to merchants through the Oracle Data Cloud. Visa also plans to work with other strategic digital ad technology partners to offer additional Visa Advertising Solutions in the future. More information about Visa Advertising Solutions is available at www.visa.com/loyalty/advertising.
