If you leverage Google Display Ads, you can amplify omnichannel ROI by 31%
In today's retail landscape, consumers seamlessly switch between online and offline channels, expecting a unified brand experience. Recent updates to Google Ads Performance Max campaigns highlight the growing importance of data-driven insights in omnichannel strategies. With new channel-level reporting and AI-powered optimizations, advertisers can now track how digital campaigns influence offline sales. Contrary to early predictions that e-commerce would render physical stores obsolete, we now see a powerful synergy between digital touchpoints and brick-and-mortar success. Google's internal data reveals a striking statistic: 59% of physical store visits are influenced by Google Search, proving that consumers increasingly blend digital research with in-person purchases. This omnichannel reality demands innovative marketing strategies where tools like Google Display Network (GDN) no longer serve merely as digital billboards but as bridges connecting online engagement to offline conversions.
Modern omnichannel marketing recognizes that customer journeys are nonlinear—consumers might discover products through YouTube Shorts, compare prices via Google Search, and ultimately purchase in-store. Google Display Ads have evolved into a sophisticated complement to this ecosystem, offering dynamic ad placements across millions of websites and apps while leveraging AI to target users most likely to visit physical locations. As brands like Natura, Perdigão, and Sanofi have demonstrated, when strategically deployed, these digital campaigns can directly lift in-store sales by 9-31%, challenging traditional notions of online-offline competition. The key lies in understanding how digital interactions inform real-world decisions and using tools like Performance Max (PMax) Offline to measure and optimize this influence.
I. Synergy Between Digital Campaigns and Physical Store Performance
The proof of omnichannel marketing's effectiveness lies in tangible case studies where digital campaigns directly influenced offline behavior. Natura, a cosmetics giant with a vast network of consultants and physical stores, faced the challenge of quantifying how online ads impacted in-person sales. By implementing PMax Offline, Natura scaled ads across Google Ads channels while using the Sales Lift model to isolate campaign impact. The outcomes were persuasive: a 6% rise in store foot traffic and a 9% sales growth throughout the campaign period when compared to control locations. This data-driven approach allowed Natura to validate digital investments and refine its multichannel strategy.
Similarly, Perdigão tackled the complexity of measuring ad influence in third-party supermarkets—a environment where brands typically lack direct sales data. Partnering with Scanntech, which tracks over 10 billion retail transactions annually, Perdigão deployed geolocated PMax Offline campaigns promoting frozen pizzas and lasagnas. The GEOx experiment divided regions into test and control groups, revealing a staggering 31% sales increase in activated areas alongside 345,000 incremental store visits. Notably, the cost per visit was 49% more efficient than category averages, proving that even in indirect sales channels, Google Display Ads can drive measurable offline impact. In the meantime, pharmaceutical giant Sanofi showcased how specialized industries can gain advantages from omnichannel approaches. By connecting PMax Offline with Napp Solutions' pharmacy ERP data, Sanofi measured a 5-18% sales lift for flagship medications in independent drugstores—a channel previously considered immeasurable for digital ROI. These cases collectively underscore a paradigm shift: digital campaigns aren't just driving clicks; they're filling physical shopping carts.
II. AI-Powered Campaigns Enhancing Omnichannel Integration
Artificial intelligence has become the engine powering modern omnichannel strategies, with Google Ads AI solutions like Performance Max and AI Max for search redefining campaign automation. A compelling contrast emerges when comparing traditional Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) with PMax. While DSAs automate keyword selection for Google Search, PMax leverages AI to optimize across all channels—Search, Display, YouTube, Maps, and more—creating a unified strategy that adapts to user behavior in real time. Swiss bookseller Ex Libris directly witnessed this transformation. After migrating five DSA campaigns to PMax, they achieved an 8% reduction in cost per acquisition (CPA) while improving return on ad spend (ROAS). The AI's ability to automatically allocate budget to high-performing channels allowed Ex Libris to streamline operations and focus on strategic growth.
The emergence of the "Power Pack" strategy—combining AI Max for Search, PMax, and Demand Gen—offers advertisers unprecedented cross-channel synergy. AI Max specializes in capturing high-intent search queries, including emerging question-based searches like "best cream for facial dark spots," which drove higher conversions for L'Oréal. Meanwhile, Demand Gen excels in visual storytelling across YouTube and Discover, adding an average 14% more conversions when used with PMax. This trifecta addresses a critical omnichallenge: meeting consumers at every touchpoint with consistent messaging, whether they're researching via text queries, browsing visually-rich platforms, or ready to visit stores. As Huseyin Savas, Google's Lead for Next Gen notes, AI Overviews now serve 1.5 billion monthly users, creating new opportunities for ads to appear alongside AI-generated answers—further erasing boundaries between digital discovery and physical purchases.
III. Creative and Technological Innovations in Google Display Advertising
The creative frontier of Google Display Advertising has expanded dramatically with generative AI and immersive formats, enabling brands to craft hyper-relevant assets at scale. Event Tickets Center's experience exemplifies this shift—by using PMax's generative AI for ad creation, they accelerated creative production by 5x while maintaining brand alignment. Google's upcoming brand controls will allow advertisers to input fonts, color palettes, and image references, ensuring AI-generated assets adhere to brand guidelines. Advanced editing tools now enable background extensions, object additions, and dynamic cropping, letting retailers showcase products in multiple contexts without extensive photoshoots.
Immersive ad formats are revolutionizing consumer confidence in online purchases. Virtual try-on features and 3D rotating Shopping ads address a historic pain point: the inability to interact with products digitally as one would in stores. Early tests show these formats significantly reduce purchase hesitation—a critical factor given that 72% of consumers say product visualization boosts buying confidence. Google's experimental interactive ads take this further; for queries like "short-term storage," AI can now recommend unit sizes and packing materials based on user-provided photos and budgets, blending utility with conversion opportunities. On YouTube Shorts—a platform with 2 billion monthly users—new vertical ad formats and interactive stickers create seamless engagement, while AI automatically animates static product images for captivating short-form videos. These innovations demonstrate how creativity and technology converge to make digital ads feel as tangible as in-store experiences.
Topkee's approach exemplifies this technological shift. Through its AI-powered creative production service, Topkee generates high-quality ad variations by combining AI-driven text, image, and video ideation with human design expertise. This ensures creatives meet market demands while maintaining brand distinctiveness. Additionally, Topkee's TM tracking system provides granular insights into ad performance across themes, sources, and media, enabling rapid creative optimization.
IV. Measuring Impact and Optimizing Campaigns
Accurate measurement remains the cornerstone of successful omnichannel strategies, particularly in attributing offline conversions to digital campaigns. Google Ads Data Manager has streamlined first-party data integration, allowing advertisers to consolidate diverse data sources—ranging from CRM systems to email lists—within minutes instead of months. This consolidation is vital for lead generation businesses with long sales cycles, as enhanced conversions can now track offline outcomes by hashing customer data and matching it back to ad interactions weeks or months later. Sanofi's pharmacy campaign success hinged on such integration, linking PMax Offline to Napp Solutions' ERP data to prove sales lifts.
For broader campaign analysis, Meridian Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) provides cross-channel attribution, helping advertisers understand how each touchpoint contributes to conversions. Perdigão's geolocation experiment showcased this by comparing sales in test versus control regions, but newer solutions like Google's tag gateway increase observable signals by 11%, improving data reliability. The introduction of "aggregate identifiers" in Google Analytics further refines attribution by addressing gaps caused by privacy-centric browsing, ensuring advertisers don't over-credit organic traffic for conversions actually driven by ads. As Nicole Beach, Google's lead generation Strategy Lead emphasizes, defining what constitutes a "high-quality lead" is essential—whether it's form submissions, phone calls, or store visits—and aligning measurement to these benchmarks ensures AI optimizes toward true business outcomes rather than vanity metrics.
Topkee provide advertising solution, the TTO tool streamlines account review, conversion tracking, and data analysis, ensuring seamless alignment between ad interactions and offline outcomes. Topkee's periodic advertising goal reporting—encompassing ROI analysis and conversion tracking—offers advertisers similar granularity. Their delivery analysis and planning services further optimize campaigns by diagnosing budget efficiency, CTR improvements, and conversion quality. Topkee's advertising performance analysis complements this by providing real-time report analysis meetings with marketing consultants, ensuring campaigns align with business outcomes rather than vanity metrics. Their TM settings tool, offering deeper tracking dimensions than UTM, enables advertisers to monitor creative performance at scale, swiftly iterating based on actionable insights.
VI. Future Trends and Strategic Recommendations
As AI Overviews expand globally following their US rollout, advertisers must prepare for evolving search behaviors where answers blend organic and sponsored content. Early tests indicate ads appearing in AI Overviews' "sponsored" sections receive higher-quality clicks than traditional listings, creating new opportunities for brands to engage users during exploratory queries. However, this demands creative adaptability—ads must provide genuine value beyond promotional messaging to align with Google's helpful content ethos. Retailers should also monitor the rise of Connected TV (CTV) as YouTube's fastest-growing screen in the UK, combining the impact of TV advertising with digital precision targeting.
Brands should next embrace the "Power Pack" methodology—implementing AI Max for Search to seize query-driven intent, PMax for cross-channel optimization, and Demand Gen for visual narrative construction—all while leveraging Meridian MMM to measure cross-funnel impact. Creative teams must balance AI efficiency with brand consistency, using generative AI for asset variations while maintaining oversight on core messaging. As Ex Libris' Daniel Haddad noted, "AI is helping us maximize the full potential of our marketing activities," but human insight remains irreplaceable in interpreting data and crafting emotionally resonant campaigns.
Conclusion
The fusion of Google Display Ads with omnichannel strategies has transformed digital marketing from a siloed endeavor into a holistic driver of both online and offline business outcomes. From Natura's 9% sales lift to Perdigão's 31% surge in supermarket conversions, the evidence is clear: when powered by AI and measured with sophisticated attribution, digital campaigns don't just coexist with physical retail—they amplify it. As consumer journeys grow more complex, brands that embrace AI-driven automation while maintaining creative authenticity will lead the next era of retail. For businesses ready to bridge the digital-physical divide, the time to act is now—with expert guidance ensuring every ad dollar delivers measurable impact across all channels.
