Retail marketing technology provider Mercent is launching Mercent Retail Analytics, which combines online marketing and search data with sales and inventory data to report results, writes ClickZ. Those results can be tied to specific keywords or groups of keywords through integration with Google, Yahoo and Microsoft via their APIs (application programming interfaces). "This really changes the game in terms of how online merchants manage online advertising spend," Eric Best, Mercent's CEO, told ClickZ.

"They can now, with confidence, know that an additional incremental dollar of ad spend applied to a given keyword or shopping portal will result in a profitable transaction."

The platform is capable of describing return on investment for every keyword in terms of business metrics specific to a retailer, such as contribution margin, inventory turns, and return on inventory investment, according to Mercent.

Typically, retailers with average online annual revenues of over $2 million would see the most benefits from the platform, Best said.