Introducing More Ways to Drive Offline Outcomes

Businesses are competing in a fast-changing world where mobile is influencing product discovery more than ever. But while people increasingly reach for their devices to shop, over 90% of sales still take place in physical stores.¹ As people rely on their mobile phones to navigate both online and offline shopping journeys, they expect their interactions with businesses to be more relevant, meaningful and actionable. In fact, nearly two-thirds of people are more likely to shop with a retailer that remembers their previous interactions and purchases across all channels.²

Over the past year, we’ve introduced solutions to help marketers understand the impact their Facebook ads have on real world outcomes like stores visits and offline conversions. Today, we're introducing more ways to help marketers better connect with their customers by re-engaging their offline audiences on Facebook.

Since launching last year, thousands of companies have used Facebook’s offline conversions tool to measure the impact of their campaigns on offline purchases, including in-store sales and phone bookings.

Businesses can now build custom audiences from their offline conversion event sets comprised of people who have previously purchased offline. These new types of audiences enable businesses to dynamically re-engage shoppers based on their interactions through offline channels such as stores or call centers. For example, a real estate company can automatically show an ad with their latest house listings to people who have called to schedule an open house tour in the last 30 days. Businesses can also create lookalike audiences to find new potential shoppers that share characteristics with their best customers that shop offline.

Businesses have many options for connecting their offline data to their digital campaigns to improve their marketing effectiveness. They can quickly get up and running with manual spreadsheet uploads, or connect directly to the Facebook Offline Conversions API. They can also take advantage of integrations from our partners including CRM and point-of-sale providers, which is an easy way to get started.

Driving foot traffic to store locations remains a priority for marketers, and many businesses are doing this with our store visits objective. Facebook store visits reporting is an estimated metric based on information from people with location services enabled on their phone. Now, thousands of businesses across more than a dozen countries are eligible to use Facebook's store visits reporting to understand the impact of their ads on foot traffic to their stores.

Select businesses that are eligible for store visits reporting can now also create custom audiences made up of people who have recently visited their store. This feature allows businesses to re-engage in-store audiences with more relevant and compelling campaigns, as well as create lookalike audiences. For example, an apparel brand may use these custom audiences to show an ad with their new winter arrivals to people who have visited their locations. They can also choose to exclude in-store customers, for example, when running a promotion available only for new customers.

We've designed these features carefully to ensure people's privacy. In Ads Preferences, we let people manage the custom audiences and interest groups that influence the ads they see on Facebook. Visit the Advertiser Help Center for more information about offline conversions and the store visits objective.