HookLogic, which places ads on its retail clients’ ecommerce sites, on Tuesday released two products that expand the reach of its ad-serving capabilities.
The company will place ads on platforms such as Google and Facebook, and has introduced the attribution tool HookLogic 360 to measure within its retail network.
It also revealed a unique way for retailers and product manufacturers to co-purchase ad inventory via HookLogic Fusion.
Say Levi’s wants to drive sales of jeans on the Macy’s website. Using Fusion, the clothing manufacturer and the retailer could share the cost of a direct-response ad on Facebook that links to the Levi’s product page on the Macy’s site. The product is available on a CPC basis.
CPGs and product manufacturers are challenged with directing consumers to a place where they can actually buy. Campaigns for products like Kellogg’s cereal or Duracell batteries typically link back to their own product sites, where few purchases happen.
Retailers are simply better at incenting consumers to buy, said HookLogic CEO Jonathan Opdyke.
Retailers, however, don’t always communicate to CPG/product manufacturer partners how their wares performed. Because HookLogic 360 shows both retailer and product manufacturers how an ad buy performed, both parties can determine the benefits of subsidizing each other’s campaign.
For instance, because HookLogic’s network includes numerous retail sites, it can connect the sale from, say, a product ad driving a user to Best Buy when the product ended up sold at Target. The data isn’t transparent to the level of individual retailers, but it can attribute the return on ad spend.
HookLogic can perform this attribution without using a web of cross-channel specialists, mobile-location experts and third-party data brokers.
Relying on third-party data companies also presents another detriment, Opdyke argued. Over the long term, as retailers and product manufacturers dump more data into these anonymized pools, they are ultimately exposing customers to companies like Amazon.
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HookLogic doesn’t expose any of its clients’ data.
“We’re a walled garden, just like Amazon,” said Opdyke. “But with Amazon, if a retailer or CPG keeps giving them data, eventually it’s going to be turned against them. If you’re a retail grocer or a grocery CPG, you give Amazon a little, a little bit more, a little bit more, and then one day Amazon Fresh owns your business.”
The two products bring HookLogic more squarely into the ad tech realm and come less than two months after the startup raised a funding round from LUMA Capital, the VC arm of LUMA Partners.
