November 13, 2015
Will Facebook’s view of nearby shoppers help stores?
Facebook has introduced a tool that will give retailers greater access to information about consumers near their stores. The catch is that all the information on those individuals is aggregated and anonymous.
In a blog entry, Facebook said its Page Insights tool now has a new tab with information that tells the aggregate demographics and trends associated with people nearby a store.
"Businesses can discover the neighborhood’s busiest days of the week and times of day, so they know when people are most likely to visit their store," Facebook wrote. "And they can see aggregate demographics of the people nearby, including age, gender, tourist and local residents. So, if their business serves tourists or people of a certain age group, they know when they have the best opportunity to connect with those people."
According to Advertising Age, trend information will be provided over the past week, month or quarter. Ages are broken down into several segments: 18-to-24, 25-to-34, 35-to-44, 45-to-54, 55-to-64 and people over 65 years old. Gender will also be quantified.
Source: Facebook
Using Facebook data to determine where someone lives and uses the service, the tool will gauge the ratio of tourists to locals. Anonymous Facebook users can be viewed within 150, 450 and 1,500 meters of a store.
Wrote Facebook, "Insights of this kind empower businesses to tailor their marketing to the people nearby and drive more people to their store."
Facebook also said that, for the first time, advertisers will be able see the percentage of people nearby who have seen their ad.
In late October, Advertising Age reported that cellphone carriers are similarly exploring using their mobile data in an anonymous and aggregated way for marketing purposes. Such data being tested includes offering real-time heat maps revealing where store visitors go home at night, listing the sites people visit while mobile surfing, and linking location and demographic data with shoppers’ web browsing history.
- Two New Tools to Improve Local Marketing – Facebook
- Facebook to Tell Brands More About Who’s Near Their Stores, Tailor Ads to Them – Advertising Age (tiered sub.)
- Facebook Debuts Location For Pages To Help Local Ad – MediaPost
- The $24 Billion Data Business That Telcos Don’t Want to Talk About – Advertising Age (tiered sub.)
BrainTrust
Jamie Tenser
Retail Tech Marketing Strategist | B2B Expert Storytelling™ Guru | President, VSN Media LLC
Recent Discussions
Discussion Questions
How valuable will gaining an aggregated and anonymous view of nearby customers be for stores? What specifics about local consumer activities would be most valuable to marketers?
Poll
In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king. While the new Facebook data might not be the “Big Data” analytics retailers would like to see, it is a huge step forward for many smaller retailers who can’t afford big analytics and systems.
In reviewing this article, there appears to be a whole lot of invaluable information that retailers can use:
- Traffic flow by time of day;
- Relative proximity to the store;
- Gender and age breakout of shopper traffic;
- Ratio of tourists to local traffic;
- Percent of people nearby who saw the retailers ad!
For marketers, the last metric on ads is huge. Frankly, if Facebook provides much more detail, there will be a revolt of Facebook users based on the “creep factor.”
Facebook allows a retailer to target a very specific customer. The retailer gets to spell out the criteria, ensuring that any promotion is being seen by the right people. The customer remains anonymous until they come into the store and buy something. This isn’t any different than any other type of advertising. It’s just now, one of the criteria is proximity to the store.
It’s hard to answer these questions because I don’t quite understand what is actually happening here, even though I read the accompanying links. Does this data being made available to merchants only apply to Facebook users that Facebook itself can track via their members’ cellphones, or is Facebook buying location info for any and all cellphone users from carriers and passing it third-party to merchants whether or not the person is actually a Facebook member? It makes a difference.
If Facebook could tap its big-data flows to provide traffic forecast data, that might actually prove useful to local retailers who may be concerned with shift scheduling and stock levels. Delivering short-term promotions or notices to FB users who are in proximity has some potential too (but beware the creep factor).
Hyper-local marketing is a major opportunity, without a doubt. I’m skeptical about the value of the analytics, however. After-the-fact traffic stats are nice-to-know, but applying those insights is the real trick for merchants who get the reports.
What can can merchants do differently with aggregated anonymous local traffic data? Adjust the store inventory mix? Yes, maybe. On balance this seems more like a local message delivery mechanism for Facebook. It remains to be seen whether it can drive shopper visits or other behaviors.
I think this will be useful for retailers who already have a Facebook strategy and looking to tie location data at least to see if there is correlation of location to Facebook reach. Since you really can’t do causation with this data — it isn’t as useful for content effectiveness measurement — it does give you some idea of concurrency and whether you want to drive localized content to Facebook as the next step.
Insights are useful when they can be activated. Otherwise, they’re merely curious.
Facebook is connecting the dots but not closing the loop. Having local insights provides info about the volume and type of neighborhood traffic. It also shows the percentage of people nearby who have seen the retailer’s ad. This is a half step. It’s up to the retailer to provide additional analytics to determine if the ad drove traffic and sales.
Of greater use would be the ability to target ads and see which recipients visited the store within some period of time after, anonymized. But I suspect the response rates are currently too low to demonstrate outcomes.
An ability to understand even the most basic mechanics about a customer, when and where, is a big step in ability to innovate a business model around digital technologies to influence and better serve a target market. Facebook is kindling an important industry shift in how data commodities can be used by retailers to foresee and take active part in their customers’ journey. Having access to specific realtime facts about local consumer activities allows retailers to think in limitless ways to provide new and relevant offerings, and will help identify where different types of partnerships can be forged to bridge traditional boundaries and create greater value for clients.
More Discussions
Should Grocers Pay Online Influencers?
What should the relationship between grocers and influencers look like?Will Google’s Pomelli Photoshoot Live up to the Hype for Retail SMBs?
Will Pomelli’s Photoshoot tool be a game-changer for retail SMBs?Mass Retailers, Including Walmart, Tie Grocers on Penetration For the First Time: What’s Next?
Walmart and other mass-channel retailers are reaching dominant penetration levels. What’s next?
In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king. While the new Facebook data might not be the “Big Data” analytics retailers would like to see, it is a huge step forward for many smaller retailers who can’t afford big analytics and systems.
In reviewing this article, there appears to be a whole lot of invaluable information that retailers can use:
For marketers, the last metric on ads is huge. Frankly, if Facebook provides much more detail, there will be a revolt of Facebook users based on the “creep factor.”
Facebook allows a retailer to target a very specific customer. The retailer gets to spell out the criteria, ensuring that any promotion is being seen by the right people. The customer remains anonymous until they come into the store and buy something. This isn’t any different than any other type of advertising. It’s just now, one of the criteria is proximity to the store.
It’s hard to answer these questions because I don’t quite understand what is actually happening here, even though I read the accompanying links. Does this data being made available to merchants only apply to Facebook users that Facebook itself can track via their members’ cellphones, or is Facebook buying location info for any and all cellphone users from carriers and passing it third-party to merchants whether or not the person is actually a Facebook member? It makes a difference.
If Facebook could tap its big-data flows to provide traffic forecast data, that might actually prove useful to local retailers who may be concerned with shift scheduling and stock levels. Delivering short-term promotions or notices to FB users who are in proximity has some potential too (but beware the creep factor).
Hyper-local marketing is a major opportunity, without a doubt. I’m skeptical about the value of the analytics, however. After-the-fact traffic stats are nice-to-know, but applying those insights is the real trick for merchants who get the reports.
What can can merchants do differently with aggregated anonymous local traffic data? Adjust the store inventory mix? Yes, maybe. On balance this seems more like a local message delivery mechanism for Facebook. It remains to be seen whether it can drive shopper visits or other behaviors.
I think this will be useful for retailers who already have a Facebook strategy and looking to tie location data at least to see if there is correlation of location to Facebook reach. Since you really can’t do causation with this data — it isn’t as useful for content effectiveness measurement — it does give you some idea of concurrency and whether you want to drive localized content to Facebook as the next step.
Insights are useful when they can be activated. Otherwise, they’re merely curious.
Facebook is connecting the dots but not closing the loop. Having local insights provides info about the volume and type of neighborhood traffic. It also shows the percentage of people nearby who have seen the retailer’s ad. This is a half step. It’s up to the retailer to provide additional analytics to determine if the ad drove traffic and sales.
Of greater use would be the ability to target ads and see which recipients visited the store within some period of time after, anonymized. But I suspect the response rates are currently too low to demonstrate outcomes.
An ability to understand even the most basic mechanics about a customer, when and where, is a big step in ability to innovate a business model around digital technologies to influence and better serve a target market. Facebook is kindling an important industry shift in how data commodities can be used by retailers to foresee and take active part in their customers’ journey. Having access to specific realtime facts about local consumer activities allows retailers to think in limitless ways to provide new and relevant offerings, and will help identify where different types of partnerships can be forged to bridge traditional boundaries and create greater value for clients.