GroundTruth Turns Its Foot Traffic Attribution Tools Onto Audio Ads.

GroundTruth, the media platform used to track online ad exposures to gauge their impact on in-store visits, is expanding to audio with a new service that aims to give digital audio ads foot-traffic attribution. It says it can do that with one-to-one attribution that verifies when an individual listener visits a specific location after listening to an ad.

Using GroundTruth’s self-serve Ads Manager platform, advertisers can create, launch, and measure their audio ad campaign, with the ability to choose between podcasts or streaming audio, ad position, location, topics and genres, and demographic data for precise targeting. The data that it returns allows advertisers to gain insight into what podcasts or publishers their ads are running on, listen-through rates, website conversions, and in-store visits.

“Advertisers look to us to run media that drives foot traffic and other real business results generated from their campaigns, so expanding to podcasts and streaming radio was an easy move,” CEO Rosie O’Meara says in the announcement. GroundTruth is already offering attribution for CTV, mobile, desktop, and direct mail.

To demonstrate how GroundTruth can be used for audio, the company shared the results of a beta test conducted by Gary’s QuickSteak that bundled CTV and mobile ads with a layer of podcast and streaming music ads that showed a 50% bump in incremental sales.

The test focused on listeners in Oklahoma and then measured how many store visits the ads produced to retailers Walmart and Sam’s Club. Gary’s QuickSteak had used the platform in the past, usually seeing an average 20% sales lift during their CTV campaign flights. But during the campaign when audio was added, GroundTruth says the brand saw an improved 30% sales lift thanks to 22,900 visits to Walmart and Sam’s Club stores driven by the ads. GroundTruth says that 0.33% visitation rate proves the impact of a multi-touch approach on performance.

“The popularity of podcasts and streaming audio has created an incredible opportunity for advertisers to reach their audience when they’re most engaged,” O’Meara says. “But some marketers have been hesitant to spend without a holistic view into the results driven by audio.” But by running on the right media channels and connecting to a real-world source of attribution data, GroundTruth says advertisers can gain a holistic view of their results, allowing them to optimize their strategy across channels for maximum impact.

GroundTruth’s expansion into audio attribution comes amid efforts to accelerate its focus on product and technology development to better serve advertisers. This month it also announced that Jeanine Percival Wright had joined GroundTruth’s Board of Directors. Most recently, Wright was Global COO and General Manager at Wondery, where she oversaw all of sales, operations, licensing, and strategy. Before that, she was the CFO of SiriusXM’s AdTech division, AdsWizz.

“Jeanine will help us build value for our investors and real business results for our clients,” O’Meara says. “Her deep understanding of business dynamics and leadership acumen will be invaluable as we expand our offerings.”

In January, the company also promoted Senior VP of Product & Technology Matt Knight to Chief Technology Officer to lead GroundTruth’s technology vision and execution into its next stage of growth. Knight joined GroundTruth in early 2021 through the acquisition of Addy, an AdTech marketplace built for SMBs he co-founded in 2016 to make ad buying easier.