Store Visits Now Available for YouTube Ads
One of the biggest challenges for brick and mortar businesses is figuring out how to measure the impact online ads have on in-store activity.
To help solve this problem, Google introduced store visits for the AdWords Search Network back in 2014. Now, they’re expanding these capabilities to YouTube ads as well.
Store Visits Recap – How do they work?
Using a slew of available data, Google models the number of visits to your store. The data they use includes: Google Earth and Street View data, GPS location signals, Google query data, visit behavior and other factors. Google doesn’t connect a specific visit to an individual click or person (for privacy reasons).
Marketing land has a good write up on the specifics of what goes into estimating store visits.
One important thing to note about store visits is that they don’t tell you if someone bought from you, just whether they visited. Therefore, to get a handle on the revenue from these visits, businesses should know the value of a customer who enters their store.
Store Visits Eligibility Requirements
To view store visits in AdWords, advertisers must meet certain requirements. You must:
- Have multiple locations and be within eligible countries
- Receive thousands of ad clicks and many store visits (Google doesn’t specify exactly how many)
- Have a Google My Business Account linked to your AdWords account
- Create each of your store locations in your GMB Account
- Have at least 90% of your locations verified in GMB
- Have active location extensions in your account
- Have enough store visit data on the backend to attribute to ad click traffic
If you’re interested in seeing store visits in your account, Google recommends reaching out to your account manager.
How Store Visits Work in YouTube
Store Visits and locations are now available for TrueView in-stream and bumper ads. People watching your videos will see your address, directions and business hours in the ad (screenshot below). You’ll then be able to see how your video ads are driving traffic to your store.
For more information, see Google’s write up about store visits for YouTube.
