Facebook Adds New Offline Attribution Options; Criteo Sues SteelHouse

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.

Facebook’s Proof Obsession

Facebook is adding new ways for businesses to link their ads to offline conversions. The most interesting is an integration with Square that could bring a boatload of SMB transactional data into the Facebook “matching” ecosystem. Facebook also will use location data to report on foot traffic to a store in the wake of an ad exposure. And it also will support transactional data imported through marketing software operated by Marketo, IBM and Acxiom’s LiveRamp. For the record, this isn’t exactly a new capability: Facebook and Datalogix, now owned by Oracle, have worked together since 2011 to connect Facebook ad spend to offline buys. More in Facebook’s blog post.

Commerce Wars

Criteo is suing performance marketing competitor SteelHouse, claiming the upstart is undercutting Criteo’s business and stealing potential clients by counterfeiting clicks, which often happened seconds after legitimate clicks attributed to Criteo. This practice gave Steelhouse an edge with advertisers measuring last-click attribution, costing Criteo business. “SteelHouse exploited its manipulation of these key performance metrics by falsely advertising that it consistently outperformed Criteo in head-to-head comparisons in order to divert business to SteelHouse,” the lawsuit states. Criteo claims SteelHouse used these tactics to poach retailer clients like TOMS in the late spring and early summer, when it allegedly dissuaded other potential clients from signing on with Criteo. Read more.

CPG ROI

Nielsen Catalina Solutions released a study showing return on ad spend (ROAS) across media platforms for CPG brands. The study analyzed nearly 1,400 campaigns over 11 years to compare ROAS to incremental sales. Magazines (the stuff printed on dead trees) delivered the highest ROAS across media with $3.94 for every dollar spent. TV offered the highest return per reached household, and mobile came out on top for incremental sales per impression. It’s fun to compare channels, but don’t upend your media mix. As the report also cautions, “It’s much harder than we thought to isolate the variables to create a pure ‘apples to apples’ comparison between media.”

Feeling Much Better

AccentHealth has acquired PageScience, a pharma-focused digital ad company that gets around the targeting “challenges” in health care media by embracing contextual rather than behavioral targeting. “In the past, regulatory and privacy concerns have delayed many pharmaceutical brands from utilizing programmatic advertising,” according to a press release. AccentHealth is a point-of-care health care industry media company (meaning it runs a waiting room television network and “patient engagement solutions” for hospitals and medical practices). Read the release.

But Wait, There’s More!