Yub today unveiled the world's first offline affiliate network, enabling merchants, retailers and restaurants to harness the power of the online affiliate model to drive in-store purchases on a massive scale. Yub is the first company to effortlessly track consumers from online clicks through to offline purchases, directly linking digital marketing spend to offline revenue. Already, two top-25 U.S. restaurant chains and two top-50 U.S. retail brands are using Yub to transform digital marketing efforts into traceable offline sales.

In addition, Yub announced that after being incubated within TrialPay, the leader in transactional advertising and cross-platform monetization, it will launch as an independent company with $12 million in funding. Yub will benefit from a strong roster of investors including Atomico, Battery Ventures, DAG Ventures, DFJ Growth, Greylock Partners, Index Ventures, T. Rowe Price, QuestMark Partners and Visa Inc.

'Despite the billions of dollars spent annually on digital advertising, merchants have had no way to track the effectiveness of how online advertising translates into offline sales. Yub represents a breakthrough for merchants by providing them an easy way to track how many of their in-store sales are directly attributable to their digital ad spend, if any at all,' said Alex Rampell, CEO and founder, Yub. 'Yub provides businesses with a direct link between online advertising and offline revenue, improving the effectiveness of online campaigns and driving in-store purchases on a massive scale, utilizing the demonstrated power of the online affiliate network model.'

Enabling Online-to-Offline (O2O) Commerce - How it Works

Yub is the first company to enable merchants, retailers and restaurants to actively drive users from any online or mobile platform directly to their physical locations - with no technology integration work for the merchants.

Retailers and restaurants can place offers and promotions online through any digital channel or existing online presence (including Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc.). However, the real scale comes from the retailer or restaurant utilizing Yub as their offline affiliate network, building their own ecosystem of content, deals and loyalty sites that promote their offers. Yub jumpstarts this effort by providing access to more than 10,000 online and mobile publisher partners.

'Online-to-offline commerce represents the next huge marketing opportunity for merchants and retailers. The ability to use online advertising to drive measureable offline sales removes the guesswork on the impact of digital advertising and helps tie digital marketing to real, offline revenue,' said Scott Kluth, president and founder of CouponCabin.com. 'We're excited to bring this model to our coupon brands and believe that ultimately, it's the consumer who will benefit from more great deals that translate into real savings.'

As consumers discover the ad or promotion for in-store purchases, they are prompted to activate the offer by registering a credit card. When the consumer uses the same credit card for the in-store purchase, Yub tracks the purchase through its TrueRealTime transactional tracking platform and the consumer instantaneously receives their reward. With these card-linked offers, consumers have no coupons to print, no mobile apps to download and no hassle to deal with. Yub provides a complete analytics suite so businesses can now track the performance of affiliate campaigns and measure ROI based on actual in-store sales.

Based on analysis of transactions across various merchant campaigns, merchant feedback, and customer surveys, Yub has proven to deliver:

Increased Ability to Acquire New Customers: 90 percent of new customers indicated that they did not plan on shopping at the merchant before seeing the digital offer. Yub actively transforms digital marketing into offline sales.
Increased Customer Spend through Yub Promotions: Consumers have spent an average of 1.5-2x the required minimum of the online promotions on in-store purchases.
Incremental Email Leads: 45 percent of consumers clicking on a Yub promotion have opted-in to receive more information about additional offers and services offered by the merchant. 85 percent of respondents were new customers.
Improved Customer Loyalty and Purchase Motivation: 80 percent of consumers indicated they planned on shopping at the store of their promotion in the future after completing the offer; 50 percent indicated they would return within three months.

'Measuring the impact of online advertising on offline sales has been the holy grail for the digital marketing industry. For the first time ever, merchants can directly link online advertising to offline sales,' said Roger Lee, general partner of Battery Ventures. 'Yub has the right team, technology and approach to fundamentally change how the industry accounts for online advertising, and how merchants use this marketing approach to boost and drive offline sales.'

About Yub

Yub is the world's first offline affiliate network. With its zero-integration technology, Yub enables retailers and restaurants to effortlessly track consumers from online clicks through to actual purchases, harnessing the power of the online affiliate model to drive in-store purchases on a massive scale. Investors in Yub include Visa Inc., Atomico, Battery Ventures, DAG Ventures, DFJ Growth, Greylock Partners, Index Ventures, T. Rowe Price and QuestMark Partners. Founded in 2013 and privately owned, Yub is headquartered in Mountain View. For more information, please visit www.yub.com.