• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, October 10, 2017

Location-based measurement company Placed on Tuesday launched Placed Attribution for Search to connect paid-search clicks to store visits. 

It's an interesting model for a location-based company to create. It seems more companies focused on data are finding their way into search. The platform directly measures the search click through a redirect implemented by the advertiser. Wherever the click redirect is implemented, Placed is able to measure.

This click redirect allows Placed to map keyword clicks to its audience that generates more than 140 billion latitudes and longitudes on a monthly basis.

David Shim, founder and CEO at Placed, says the ability to separate media from attribution enables advertisers to optimize paid search against a metrics independent of media. 

When asked why Placed Attribution would be used when Google now does something similar with its Analytics, Shim says it offers another option. The platform delivers third-party offline attribution for search in the same way that the largest SEM management solutions do.

RetailMeNot, which provides coupons for retail stores and restaurants, piloted the third-party attribution platform across 10 different campaigns to understand the digital and offline return on investment. The results returned 37% of searches from in-store visits in the first 48 hours and delivered four times the incremental return on ad spend. The search campaigns also outperformed Placed's internal retail benchmarks by an average of four times.

Shim calls the platform "a standard currency of measurement" that measures data across all media channels, including digital, search, and out-of-home advertising.