Mobile attribution moves deeper into the material world with Sito Mobile and Go2mobi announcements

Attribution has long been the bugaboo for digital advertising. Without knowing if your ad convinced someone to do something, how do you know if the spend was worthwhile?

The mobile-ad-to-physical-store connection is particularly problematic, but a number of solutions have been released in recent years — including ones this week from Sito Mobile and Go2mobi.

Today, mobile advertising platform Sito Mobile announced a partnership with Cardlytics, so that the latter’s massive tracking of credit and debit card purchases can become the last step in determining if a real-world sale resulted from a digital ad.

Cardlytics specializes in tracking user activity for bank-issued cards, working with more than 1,500 banks. It has targeted rewards campaigns in bank websites and apps to cardholders based on their purchase histories, and it recently made that anonymized first-party data available for ad targeting.

The Cardlytics partnership completes the loop for Sito’s launch last week of its Sito Real-time Verified Walk-in technology. That added real-time measurement to the Jersey City-based company’s existing Verified Walk-in, where in-app or mobile web ads to a specific device are tracked through Sito’s geofencing to determine if they resulted in that device owner walking into an actual store.

For many firms, Sito EVP Jon Lowen told me, tracking foot traffic to stores from their mobile ads is often reported in the middle or at the conclusion of a campaign. Sito’s real-time version is designed to make that attribution and performance tracking available immediately, for each mobile device ID, so that the campaigns can be tweaked in flight if needed. The Cardlytics deal now adds purchase attribution to the report, matched with Sito’s data via the mobile device ID.

Lowen noted that the combination of real-time reporting, granular tracking down to the mobile device, and now purchases, is a differentiator from competitors. Sito has recently enhanced its platform, including tech from the acquisition last year of mobile marketer Hipcricket’s advertising business.

Here’s a screen from Sito’s attribution tracking:

Yesterday, mobile ad platform Go2mobi announced it is now integrated with Placed Inc., which specializes in connecting ad exposures to store visits.

Go2mobi President and co-founder Tom Desaulniers told me that this integration adds a new layer to his company’s previous attribution chain, which was focused on digital actions like click-to-call.

Desaulniers said his company had a foot-traffic attribution product, which relied on its SDK tracking of mobile devices that had been served ads. It reported foot traffic at the end of a campaign, but Placed — which utilizes a large panel of mobile users who have installed apps it tracks — is “near real-time.”

Like other mobile marketers — including MediaBrix, FollowAnalytics and MobileFuse — Go2mobi emphasizes the right “moments” for serving ads. A nearby breakfast special in the morning, for instance, or a sale on rain gear when it’s pouring. By understanding the context, he said, Go2mobi can better determine not only which ads drove in-store foot traffic, but the best times and conditions for them to be shown.

Desaulniers said his company’s recognition of the right moment is more extensive than other mobile marketers. With the Placed integration, he said, “we can tie these moments back to store visits” so that brands can improve their campaigns by their choice of moments.

He noted that, like Sito, Go2mobi also tracks individualized mobile devices, although he added that brands are usually more interested in aggregate data. And, he said, his data from the field is reported in real time, but the stats are grouped by days that are continually updated.