Facebook has launched Local Awareness ads with a native shop locator feature, which can be used to find and navigate to the nearest branch without leaving the ad, and the ability to track store visits and purchases as an effectiveness metric.

This lets retail advertisers start to close the loop by seeing how many people come into a store after seeing a Facebook campaign. The metric is estimated based on information from people with location services enabled on their phone.

This functionality has been adopted by the likes of Marks & Spencer, Burger King and Cadillac, as well as French retailer E.Leclerc, which reported that 12 per cent of clicks on their Facebook ad were followed by a visit to a shop within seven days.

Finally, with the offline conversions API, retailers can also match transaction data from their customer database or POS system to Facebooks ad data, either directly through Facebook or with partners including IBM, Marketo and Square.

Don’t forget to enter the Effective Mobile Marketing Awards. The Early Bird deadline for submissions is 22 July. More details here.