• by Tyler Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_tyler, February 18, 2015

Programmatic ad targeting continues to seep into new areas. From display, to television, and even print, ad tech has stretched across the industry. And it’s proving to have an impact on the way consumers shop in the physical world.

Measuring digital advertising’s impact on physical shopping is not a new concept. At the end of 2014, Oracle acquired Datalogix, an audience-targeting firm that specializes in doing just that. The buy was expected to cost Oracle’s hundreds of millions of dollars.

Rocket Fuel, a programmatic ad platform, is trying to get into the game. The company this week announced the launch of “Local Lift” in the U.S., which allows advertisers to run mobile campaigns meant to drive in-store traffic.

Rocket Fuel claims that using programmatic targeting through its new offering has led to a 41.3% lift in store visits. The company uses Placed, a location-based ad targeting firm, for attribution.

“We expect the availability of store visit attribution to bring a lot of sidelined marketing dollars into the mobile space,” stated Mark Prior, Rocket Fuel’s VP of mobile and international.

Dr. Pepper Snapple Group used the Rocket Fuel’s Local Lift tech at over 1,000 grocery store locations for a recent campaign, Sheila Bonner, VP of shopper marketing at the soft drink company, said in a release. She attributed over 25,000 sales and 213,000 in-store visits directly to the campaign, at a cost of $0.21 per visit. The average cost per store visit Rocket Fuel has seen thus far is $0.57.

The Rocket Fuel news is the latest in a string of stories that have tied ad tech to the physical world. There is Time Inc.’s decision to sell print ads via programmatic, Oracle’s acquisition of Datalogix, and, perhaps most interesting, the concept of “physical retargeting.”

At the MediaPost’s IoT: Beacons event in Chicago last week, the concept of “physical retargeting” via beacons arose. Data and Targeting Insider covers the prospect at length. It’s another example of ad technology stepping outside the boundaries of digital.