• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, March 21, 2012

Charging into the next phase of online advertising, a bevy of companies will begin to roll out platforms and services that integrate offline data with online to improve ad targeting across the Internet.

Companies like The Weather Channel began offering data related to weather to improve product selection and ad targeting. Kenshoo, Proclivity Media, and others will soon integrate offline check-in and sales data with online search and other activities.

Kenshoo, a digital marketing software company, will roll out tools that allow advertisers to combine check-in services with search and social data. Geoffrey Shenk, a managing director for the company, shared details with MediaPost and a handful of OMMA Global attendees who joined the conversation. CMO Aaron Goldman briefly mentioned the service and ability to add performance data in December.

Shenk said the product ties into application programming interfaces, a source code specification, from Facebook, Foursquare and others allowing Kenshoo to pull in data to its search platform. It ties physical intent to search queries to connect the physical world with the virtual. It will also attempt to identify and combine electronic-wallet purchases from platforms like Google Wallet.

A check-in on a mobile device, ad pixel and cookie in the browser helps Kenshoo's technology identify intent through a path to conversion of clicks and swipes. In this case, consider the conversion a check-in -– which Shenk called "pixel-less." The search could take place on the desktop or mobile. A unique ID that comes from Kenshoo ties it together.

Near field communication, the technology supported in Google Wallet, will become the next "big thing for advertisers," Shenk said. It's a topic that Michael Liard, director of the Automatic Identification Business Practice at VDC Research, will highlight at the Search Insider Summit in April.

Kenshoo isn't the only technology company building platforms that support online and offline data.

David Kenny, chairman and CEO at The Weather Channel, during Tuesday's keynote at OMMA Global in San Francisco, described how several retail stores use the data to build statistical models to determine what should go on sale for the weekend based on the weather.

Then there is Proclivity Systems. The company will rebrand to Proclivity Media within a couple of weeks when it launches a private ad exchange called FLX that offers the integration of offline and online data.

Sheldon Gilbert, Proclivity's CEO, said the company is working with advertisers to buy media based on customer transactions in stores. The strategy aims to help advertisers better understand those customers looking for specific products by using a brand's or a retailer's online and offline data.

The benefit comes from knowing that a 30-year-old woman recently bought a black dress and metallic gold purse at Nordstrom before serving an online ad for another product or service she might want.