By: by Laurie Sullivan

Google has transformed search engine advertising and marketing, but few might have anticipated the move to use machine learning as the core technology to build new services in attribution as well as local ad extensions for YouTube.

The company will announce Tuesday from its Marketing Mix conference in San Francisco several new services including Google Attribution, a cross-channel and cross-device free attribution tool, aimed at making it easy for marketers to understand the data from campaigns running across search, email, social and other channels before taking action.

Integrations with AdWords, Google Analytics and DoubleClick Search make it easy to combine data from all marketing channels. The end result is a complete view of the performance for each campaign.

Engineers built the platform, in part, on technology from Adometry, a software as a services attribution platform that Google acquired in 2014.

"Machine learning helps the platform build prediction models to see how adding or removing channels or devices would change conversions," said Babak Pahlavan, director of product management at Google.

Google also will bundle the technology with Attribution 360 TV, which provides minute-by-minute analysis of TV campaigns and the link in performance to an increase in searches across google.com.

Through Google Attribution, marketers gain a better understanding of data from machine-learning tools like Google Analytics, which processes about half a trillion events across devices daily.

Integrations with AdWords, Google Analytics and DoubleClick Search make it easy to bring together data from all marketing channels. The end result is a complete view of performance for each campaign.

As more online ads drive consumers into stores, Google also will announce it measures more than 5 billion store visits in 17 countries. As a result, Google will extend local ad formats and store technology to TrueView Ads running in YouTube, according to Kishore Kanakamedala, director of product management at Google.

Marketers will have the ability to see the path consumers take from a click to in-store sales. Wendy's has seen nearly a million visits to restaurants based on a campaign the company ran during the fourth quarter in 2016, Kanakamedala said.

Google introduced store visits measurement in 2014 to help marketers gain more insight about the consumer's journey that begins online and ends in a store. In less than three years, advertisers across the world have measured more than 5 billion store visits using AdWords.

The ability to link online ads to in-store purchases enables advertisers to measure the effect of online advertisements without the need to integrate codes and pixels in Web pages.

A handful of advertisers have been testing the platform. One insight gained is that when someone clicks on a google search ad, he/she is 25% more likely to buy something in the store and spend 10% more. Compared with a consumer who just walks into the store, Kanakamedala said.  

Store visits measurement is available for Search, Shopping and Display campaigns. Soon this technology will be available for YouTube TrueView campaigns to help marketers measure the impact of video ads on foot traffic to stores.