Cuebiq is proud to announce a new partnership with Affinity Solutions, the leading consumer purchase insights company. Together, Cuebiq’s verified visit measurement and Affinity Solutions’ Consumer Purchase Lift provide a more complete view of campaign performance—and holistic attribution insights. 

Simply put, Cuebiq x Affinity Solutions empowers advertisers to understand not only campaign-driven visits to their location, but also how much campaign-driven IRL spend occurred. 

For brands and agencies that invest in campaigns to drive people to physical locations, measuring success can sometimes feel like an inexact science. On the one hand, marketers could clearly measure impressions, clicks, and other digital engagement. On the other hand, they could also measure store visits.

But tying store-level revenue to a specific campaign—and IRL store visits driven by that campaign—often remained a “squishy” number. 

This partnership closes the loop between media exposure, physical visits, and verified transactions. 

Connecting Digital Impressions to IRL Revenue  

For retailers, restaurants, fitness studios, auto dealerships, and many other categories dependent on physical store visits, closing the loop between media and revenue can quickly turn into a hall of mirrors and struggle to define and defend ROAS. 

Traditional digital metrics are essential to gauge campaign engagement, but impressions and clicks tell only part of the story when the ultimate action you want customers to take occurs IRL. 

Cuebiq helps solve the IRL attribution problem through location intelligence. Our measurement utilizes privacy-first, fully opted-in, device-level location data to determine when a person visits real-world points of interest. These insights help marketers measure campaign impact on foot traffic and understand IRL customer behavior. 

These are what we call “in situ” insights—and they lead our partners to a deeper understanding of human behavior where and when it actually happens. 

As a result of this new partnership with Affinity Solutions, these insights now extend beyond visits to include purchase-based outcomes. 

Introducing Traffic x Transactions 

Cuebiq can now integrate transaction-based performance metrics from Affinity Solutions Consumer Purchase Lift product directly into our client measurement dashboard. 

In addition to attributing store-level traffic measurements such as visits, cost per visit, incrementality and uplift to your campaign, you can also measure… 

• Total transactions 
• Unique shoppers 
• Total spend 
• Sales rate 
• Sales uplift 
• Average basket size 

These metrics complement Cuebiq’s existing visit measurement. Together they deliver a complete view of campaign attribution and return on ad spend (ROAS) at the store level. 

In simple terms, advertisers can now measure both: 

• Traffic: who visited a location after being exposed to an ad 
• Transactions: what those customers spent 

This combination helps marketers make better decisions about media investment, targeting, and campaign optimization. 

The Privacy-First Data Behind the Insights 

The transaction data powering this capability comes from a leader in the space, Affinity Solutions. Affinity Solutions provides exclusive access to fully permissioned purchase data from over 100 million U.S. and U.K. cardholders, representing 96B+ transactions, enabling optimized campaign strategies, targeting, and outcomes.  

Importantly, this data is built on consumer consent. Bank partners and their customers opt– in to participate in these rewards programs, allowing the data to be used for aggregated insights. 

The dataset captures real purchase activity, including: 

• Exact time of transaction 
• Cardholder-level purchase data 
• Merchant and location information 
• Geographic mapping and merchant tagging 

All personal data is anonymized before it is used for measurement. This ensures all measurement remains privacy-safe while still delivering accurate and actionable insights. 

How We Connect IRL Traffic and Transactions 

Cuebiq combines these datasets through a privacy-safe matching process. First, campaign exposure data is collected using pixels or log files from the advertising campaign. Cuebiq then translates those identifiers into mobile advertising IDs (MAIDs) and identifies users within its measurement panel. 

Next, a matched exposed group is created from users who saw the campaign. A control group with similar characteristics is also built to measure incremental impact. Affinity Solutions then provides aggregated transaction insights for both groups. 

By comparing exposed and control groups, Cuebiq determines how the campaign influenced: 

• Store visits 
• Transaction volume 
•  Incremental sales 

The final insights are delivered directly in the Cuebiq measurement dashboard and campaign reporting. 

This approach allows marketers to measure both mid-funnel and bottom-funnel outcomes within a single framework. 

New, Holistic Attribution Helps Define True ROAS 

For brands that operate physical locations, this new capability is a leap forward in how campaign performance can be evaluated. 

Instead of asking only whether advertising drove visits, or assuming IRL sales can be attributed to ad spend, marketers can now see: 

• Did those visits lead to purchases? 
• How much revenue did the campaign generate?
• Did exposed audiences spend more than similar non-exposed consumers?

These answers help teams gain a full view of IRL campaign attribution: verified visits and revenue, against an unexposed control group and at the store level. 

It also improves campaign optimization. With access to both traffic and sales signals, advertisers can adjust targeting strategies, messaging, and media channels while campaigns are still running. 

The result is better performance and more efficient marketing spend. 

Privacy-First, Fully Consented, and Future-Proofed Data 

Both Cuebiq and Affinity Solutions are committed to privacy-safe data practices. 

The combined solution uses opt-in datasets, anonymized transaction records, and aggregated reporting to ensure consumer privacy remains protected. 

This approach enables marketers to gain valuable insights while respecting the expectations of modern consumers and regulatory standards. 

Gain a Full Picture of Campaign Impact 

Understanding human behavior requires looking beyond surface-level metrics. 

With Cuebiq’s visit measurement and Affinity Solutions’ transaction insights, marketers can now see the full journey—from ad exposure to store visit to purchase. 

This is a more complete way to measure marketing performance in the real world. If you’d like to see how traffic + transaction measurement can improve your campaign insights, we’d love to show you how it works. 

Contact Cuebiq today for more information or to schedule a demo. Let’s do something amazing together!

The post TRAFFIC x TRANSACTIONS first appeared on Cuebiq Group, LLC.

It’s no secret the noise in marketing makes it hard for any message to stick—let alone influence customer behavior. 

In fact, estimates show the average person is exposed to between 4,000 and 10,000 ads per day across TV, mobile, social media, websites, billboards, and more. Over 16 waking hours, that’s around 4 to 10 ads per minute. So how can your campaigns stand apart and make an impact? 

At Cuebiq, we believe that relevance is the key to driving better audiences—and better campaigns. Cuebiq Audiences is a suite of pre-built and custom audience segments fueled by the true relevance of actual, real-world customer behavior—not just clicks, cookies, or inferred interests. 

With Cuebiq Audiences, you can identify and activate audiences where it matters most, and optimize campaigns with data that reflects true relevance, commitment, and choice.

Real-World Customer Behavior Informs Relevance—and Matters More Than Ever

Traditional online signals such as page views, clicks, likes, and app events are but limited. Most digital ad exposures are passive or irrelevant—and never command full or even partial attention. And while digital indicator metrics are valuable, the noise and fragmentation they live within can sometimes make them misleading as a foundation for your targeting and marketing.

In contrast, actual physical visits—going to a store, dining at a restaurant, or attending an event—show real interest, real attention, and true intent. Visiting a place requires time, effort, and choice. That’s why Cuebiq’s privacy-first methodology focuses on where people actually go in the physical world. When someone regularly visits a restaurant or retail location, that behavior reveals true affinity and loyalty in a way that an online click simply cannot.

Cuebiq captures anonymized, opt-in location data from a wide network of mobile apps and matches visits to real-world points of interest (POIs). This makes it possible to build audiences rooted in real human movement and patterns, instead of surface-level interactions.

Cuebiq Audiences: Easy to Access and Impactful to Campaigns

Cuebiq Audiences make media targeting easier and more effective. You can choose from 1,000+ ready-to-use audience segments or create custom segments tailored to your campaign strategy. 

These audiences are accessible directly through the Cuebiq dashboard—or they can be activated across the DSPs and DMPs you already use, including:

• LiveRamp
• DV360
• The Trade Desk
• Basis
• Eyeota
• Samba TV
• Cadent
• Yahoo!
• and more

Cuebiq Audiences are organized across key customer behavior categories including:

• Retail – E.g. audiences that frequently visit Home Depot or Macy’s
• Dining – Such as late-night diners, coffee lovers, or frequent QSR visitors
• Seasonal –  Including Black Friday shoppers or back-to-school audiences
• Lifestyle – E.g. gym-goers, recent movers, or healthy lifestyle segments
• B2B – Such as high-value business groups like lawyers, dentists, or job seekers.
• Customized – Build audiences based on combinations of behavior (e.g., seen at KFC and Popeyes but not at Chick-Fil-A).

Each audience is built from precise visit data from users who have fully and transparently opted-in to share location signals. That data is processed, standardized, and classified to ensure audiences reflect actual real-world customer behavior and activity—leaving behind the guesswork of traditional behavioral proxies.

Awareness + Action = Better Audience Outcomes

Building audiences from real visitation behavior helps you target more intelligently across the funnel. Here’s how:

• Brand Affinity – Identify people who show consistent loyalty to places that align with your brand goals
• Loyalty Signals – Use frequency and repeat visitation patterns to find your true customers
• Competitive Targeting – Reach audiences who prefer your competitors’ locations and invite them to choose you
• Brand-Agnostic Reach – Capture people who demonstrate broad behavior patterns without current brand bias

These insights go beyond simple reach or frequency. They help you understand why audiences behave the way they do and empower smarter decision-making.

Talk to Us to Transform Your Audience Strategy with Customer Behavior

Contact us for more information or to schedule a demo on building audiences and measuring campaigns powered by real human behavior.

The post CUT THROUGH NOISE WITH TRUE RELEVANCE first appeared on Cuebiq Group, LLC.

Are too many marketing decisions based purely on digital signals? Impressions, clicks, shares, and conversions are often how performance is gauged. And it’s not to say these numbers aren’t important, but do they tell the whole story and paint a full picture of your ROAS? 

And how deep and insightful are the strategies driven by indicator metrics like these when you feed them into future campaigns? 

The real challenge when digital metrics are held up as a proxy for performance is that they fail to answer a more simple—and insightful—campaign performance question: Who actually showed up?

The fact is, when your business features brick-and-mortar, location visits are the strongest indicator of interest, affinity, and loyalty. Where people go, how often they go, and which places they choose over others reveal what they truly value. 

Our privacy-first, device-level footfall data—actual visits to real places—is a catalyst to help brands and agencies understand human behavior. It reveals what customers do, not just what they view or click.

To make this kind of insight more accessible, we’ve released a new dataset available at no cost in the Snowflake Marketplace: Visit-Based Brand Affinity Targeting by County.

Inform Your Strategic Direction with our Free Dataset Built on Real Footfalls

The Visit-Based Brand Affinity Targeting by County dataset is powered by approximately 3 million Daily Active Users in the U.S. and is based entirely on observed, privacy-compliant, fully-consented footfall measurement. 

This is not modeled interest or inferred intent. It reflects real people visiting real locations.

The dataset shows customer behavior at the county level, making it a powerful tool for directional analysis and early-stage strategy. It allows marketers to understand how your brand performs compared to competitors—and where opportunity exists.

Because the dataset is free and available directly through the Snowflake Marketplace, your team can explore it easily and securely alongside your existing data workflows.

Compare Loyalty, Competition, and Coverage

One of the most valuable uses of this dataset is comparison.

You can dive deeply into counties where your brand leads in visitation and identify where customer loyalty appears strongest. You can also see counties where competitors attract more visits to help highlight gaps in awareness, availability, or preference. 

This type of comparison supports questions marketers often struggle to answer with confidence:

• Where are we winning?
• Where are we falling behind?
• Are there regions where our brand presence is strong, but campaign spend is low?
• Do these patterns align with what we see in our first-party data?

Because the dataset is built on actual visits, it provides a reality check that can complement your CRM data, sales reports, and digital campaign metrics.

A Strategic Starting Point for Smarter Campaigns

This dataset is designed to support directional strategy. It helps teams prioritize markets, shape messaging, and think more clearly about segmentation before baking out campaigns.

It also offers a preview of what’s possible with Cuebiq’s full suite of solutions. While the dataset is county-level, partnering with Cuebiq enables brands and agencies to go further—building custom audiences based on real visitation patterns—or overlaying footfall data and projections on your first-party data. That includes audiences of people who visit your locations, your competitors’ locations—or places tied to specific interests.

And it’s all grounded in demonstrated, observed behavior that’s fully compliant with the highest standards of privacy protection and consent.

In addition to informing audience and campaign strategy, Cuebiq is the next-level choice to measure campaign performance and ROAS, bridging the attribution gap between digital engagement, exposure metrics, and actual footfalls tied to your campaigns.

Start Exploring—and Go Deeper When You’re Ready

The Cuebiq Visit-Based Brand Affinity Targeting by County dataset is available now for free in the Snowflake Marketplace. It’s a practical way to explore foot-traffic-based insights and bring real-world behavior into your planning process.

If you’d like to understand how this data can be expanded into custom audiences, campaign measurement, or deeper behavioral insights, Cuebiq can help. Our team works with brands and agencies to turn real human activity into actionable strategy—so decisions are based on where customers actually go, not just what they see.

Start Today: Explore the dataset in the Snowflake Marketplace or contact Cuebiq to learn how we can help you build audiences and measure campaigns fueled by real human behavior.

The post Who’s Showing Up? first appeared on Cuebiq Group, LLC.

In his Medium article, Stefaan Verhulst pointed to the growing scarcity of once openly available private-sector datasets for research and public benefit. While the article focused on social-media data and private-sector climate data, a similar trend has been evident in the mobility data space as data-sharing programs launched in response to the COVID-19 pandemic ceased offering data for academic research and public policy.

In contrast, Cuebiq’s commitment to providing ethically sourced data for public benefit remains strong. In fact, we are doubling down on our efforts to use big data to solve big challenges with our Social Impact program.

Having migrated our privacy-preserving data platform to Snowflake’s powerful Snowsight workspace, Cuebiq is empowering researchers to access, explore, and analyze mobility data in a secure, scalable, and collaborative environment.

From research on natural disasters and air pollution to supporting an open-data challenge for international development, Cuebiq is proud to provide mobility data for social good. Here are just a few recent research initiatives of note where Cuebiq data has helped…

Intersection of Air Pollution Exposure and Inequality

The fine particulate matter produced by combustible and fossil fuels is linked to increased mortality from respiratory diseases, cardiovascular diseases, and lung cancer. However, traditional studies to measure human exposure to air pollution typically focus on where people live without taking into account people’s exposure to unhealthy air as they move throughout the day, whether walking, commuting, or exercising.

Researchers at MIT’s Senseable Cities Lab combined Cuebiq data and census data with street-level air-quality sensor data in the Bronx borough of New York City. Their findings indicate populations from Hispanic-majority and low income neighborhoods are disproportionately exposed to fine particulate matter. Additionally, their study found that ethnicity was a better predictor of exposure compared to income.

Mobility Patterns During Natural Disasters

Awareness of how populations respond to natural disasters is critical to preparedness and response efforts, and multiple studies have utilized Cuebiq data to analyze mobility behaviors during natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes. In a recent publication in Nature Scientific Reports, researchers from the University of Florida develop nuanced insight into the mobility characteristics of communities affected by Hurricane Ian, which made landfall in Florida in September 2022.

By segmenting the population during times of normality into ‘returners’ (those who regularly visit a limited number of locations) and ‘explorers’ (those who visit a wider range of diverse locations), the researchers demonstrated that both groups maintained their mobility characteristics before, during, and after the hurricane. Using these classifications allow officials to better prepare for and respond to the unique mobility tendencies of returner or explorer communities likely to be affected by natural disasters.

Privacy-Preserving Data for International Development

In addition to supporting research and public-benefit use cases in the United States and Canada, Cuebiq is committed to enabling access to critical data insights for economic development and poverty reduction programs in the Global South. Building on Cuebiq’s long-standing partnership with The World Bank, we sponsored a data challenge at the 2024 edition of NetMob, the premier conference on the analysis of mobile phone datasets.

World Bank researchers prepared these datasets within Snowflake’s Snowsight workspace, using its SQL and Python tools to analyze and aggregate the data in a secure, governed environment.

Hosted at the World Bank Headquarters in October 2024, the NetMob data challenge provides researchers with pro-bono access to highly aggregated, privacy-preserving international datasets. With projects ranging from sustainable transportation to natural disaster response, we are proud to be filling a critical gap for mobility insights in the Global South.

Sustaining Progress with “Data For Good”

Continued access to high-quality mobility data is crucial to sustaining cutting-edge research and policy in areas such as disaster response and urban development. To remain at the fore of the “Data for Good” movement within the mobility data industry, Cuebiq adheres to three core principles of responsible data sharing:

Provenance: Cuebiq solely collects data from users who actively opt-in to anonymized data sharing for research purposes.

Privacy: In addition to anonymizing our data, we apply patented privacy-enhancing technologies and abide by sensitive points of interest policy to protect the privacy of users who entrust Cuebiq with their data. Moreover, researchers access Cuebiq data through Cuebiq’s Snowflake-enabled Data Platform, which allows them to query granular data while solely exporting privacy-preserving aggregate outputs in return.

Accessibility: In addition to offering discounted access to our data for research purposes, we provide a select number of pro-bono accounts annually to organizations that create profound social impact, and develop innovative open-source solutions for the geospatial community.

By upholding these principles, Cuebiq remains committed to supporting the ethical use of mobility data for research and the common good.

Interested in partnering with our Social Impact program? Contact us, and we’ll schedule a quick discovery call.

The post An Age of Mobility Data for Social Good first appeared on Cuebiq Group, LLC.

Having migrated our privacy-preserving data platform to Snowflake’s powerful Snowsight workspace, Cuebiq is empowering researchers to access, explore, and analyze mobility data in a secure, scalable, and collaborative environment.

Researching Human and Wildlife Activity with Location Data

Dr. Holbrook’s research at University of Wyoming focuses on how human presence shapes wildlife behavior, movement, and outcomes.

One of the questions his team is exploring is the “human-shield hypothesis”. This concept suggests that some animals may use areas with higher human activity as safe zones to avoid more dominant predators.

In Grand Teton National Park, for example, his team is studying whether rising visitation levels are creating conditions helping smaller animals like the Rocky Mountain red fox steer clear of coyotes or gray wolves. If the larger predators avoid areas of heavier human activity, foxes may spend more time in those spaces. This research may help explain why red fox numbers have grown so significantly in the park over the past 30 years.

Human-wildlife interactions sit at the center of many modern conservation challenges. As Dr. Holbrook notes, outdoor recreation produces over $600 billion each year. With more people spending time in natural spaces, understanding when and how these interactions occur is more important than ever.

How is This Research Conducted? 

Dr. Holbrook’s team combines GPS collar data from wildlife with Cuebiq’s aggregated human mobility data. Part of this involves transforming anonymized mobility signals into heat maps to note where and when people are most active in a given area.

With this data in hand, they test specific behavioral questions, such as:

• Do animals move faster in higher-activity zones?
• Do they avoid heavily visited areas beyond what would be expected?
• Do animals exposed to frequent human activity experience differences in reproduction or energy reserves?

These comparisons help reveal how animals adjust to changing environments and what it could mean for conservation planning.

Cuebiq’s platform and tools (including streamlined access through Snowflake) allow Dr. Holbrook’s team to process aggregated human mobility data quickly and integrate it directly into their analytical workflows. This reduces time spent preparing data and accelerates the path to measurable insights about human-wildlife interactions, and findings for their research.

Dr. Holbrook’s team is currently analyzing data from several projects, with findings to be shared as they move through preparation and peer review. As results become available, we look forward to sharing them.

Dr. Holbrook’s work reinforces how important it is to understand the impact of human activity on wildlife. Cuebiq is proud to support meaningful scientific discovery such as this with privacy-first data.

“Data For Good” is a Core Principle at Cuebiq

Continued access to high-quality location data is crucial to sustaining cutting-edge research. To remain at the fore of the “Data for Good” movement within the mobility data industry, Cuebiq adheres to three core principles of responsible data sharing:

Provenance: Cuebiq solely collects data from users who actively opt-in to anonymized data sharing for research purposes.

Privacy: In addition to anonymizing our data, Cuebiq applies patented privacy-enhancing technologies and abides by sensitive points of interest policy to protect the privacy of users who entrust Cuebiq with their data. Moreover, researchers access Cuebiq data through Cuebiq’s Snowflake-enabled Data Platform, which enables them to query granular data while solely receiving privacy-preserving aggregate outputs in return.

Accessibility: In addition to offering discounted access to our Data Cleanroom for research purposes, we provide a select number of pro-bono accounts annually to organizations that create profound social impact, and develop innovative open-source solutions for the geospatial community.

To learn more, feel free to contact us at Cuebiq.

The post Location Data Research on Human + Wildlife Interactions first appeared on Cuebiq Group, LLC.

The interface improvements make it easier than ever to access the metrics that matter most right on the insights tab of your Cuebiq dashboard.

That means a clearer, more actionable view of campaign performance across both impressions and real-world store visits.

Get a Clear View of Visit-Related KPIs

We introduced three new visit-related KPIs, featured on the insights tab of the Cuebiq dashboard, highlighting how advertising exposure drives store traffic:

• • Visit Frequency
  • Visit Dwell Time
  • Visit Breakdowns

Access Enhanced Insights Thanks to Impression-Related KPIs

Two new impression-related KPIs were added as well, delivering insights to help you optimize campaigns in real time by analyzing how impressions are delivered and performing:

• • Impressions Generating Visits by Day/Hour
  • Daily Visit Rate—Exposed vs Control Group

We developed and included these KPIs to provide deeper performance insights and allow for more efficient, real time campaign optimization.

Informative, Actionable + Easy to Navigate

To simplify reporting, all these KPIs are organized into two dedicated tabs within the report:

• Visit Insights: understand how those impressions translate into store visits.
• Impression Insights: see how impressions are delivered.

If you haven’t had the opportunity to explore these insights in your dashboard, log in today or email your Cuebiq rep.

If you’re interested in seeing how partnering with Cuebiq can help you harness real-world insights on human behavior for better outcomes and sustained growth, contact us today or book a demo.

The post Dashboard Enhancements for Visits + Impressions first appeared on Cuebiq Group, LLC.

Black Friday looked different this year.

While retail foot traffic did not reach the same surge we saw in 2024, consumer spending grew. Unsurprisingly, the lion’s share of spend came from record-breaking online shopping. This shift has been happening for decades, but continues to raise important questions about consumer behavior, local trends, and how brands should adjust their strategies.

Cuebiq wanted to go deeper on the numbers to provide better measurement and more clarity, so we ran a national study to see how, where, and when people moved in and out of stores on the most talked-about retail day of the year.

This piece is just a sampling of the data and insights we were able to gather in this year’s study. For more in-depth access to our findings and analysis, get in touch with the Cuebiq team.

A Quick Overview of the Cuebiq Black Friday Study

Cuebiq analyzed more than 1.1 million unique devices across every statistically significant corner of the United States to understand in-store Black Friday activity in both 2024 and 2025.

To make our year-over-year comparisons accurate and bake in the proper context for each set of data, we established a baseline of foot traffic for each year by using the seven weeks leading up to Black Friday. The baselines for each year are built from four weeks of normal foot traffic with two weeks of cool-off time.

• 2024 baseline: October 14 – November 10
• 2025 baseline: October 13 – November 9

This approach keeps our measurement rooted in the consumer and marketplace realities of each specific year. It reflects seasonality, consumer confidence and sentiment, and promotional cycles without being influenced by data from unrelated or disconnected periods of time.

Across nearly all verticals and geographies, Black Friday foot traffic rose above the baseline in both years. But a spike in retail foot traffic on Black Friday is not uncommon. What is interesting is that the spike in 2025 was muted in comparison to the previous year, and this bears consideration by the brands, agencies, and channels driving retail traffic.

Black Friday 2025 showed a clear slowdown in retail foot traffic. The average increase over baseline in 2025 was 59.5%, down from 74% in 2024.

Meanwhile, unsurprisingly, online spending surged:

• CBS News reported $11.8B in Black Friday online sales, a 9.1% jump from 2024
  
• Consumers got a digital jump on Black Friday, with a record-breaking $6.4B in online sales on Thanksgiving Day
• Between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. on Black Friday, consumers spent $12.5M per minute online
  
• MasterCard SpendingPulse reported online sales grew 10.4% YoY, while in-store spend rose only 1.7%

These sales numbers provide important context for the foot-traffic results of Cuebiq’s Black Friday study. Let’s look at some of the numbers…

Performance by Vertical:
Electronics Still Lead, But Growth Slowed Overall

Some retail verticals continued to deliver strong Black Friday lifts in foot traffic:

• Electronics: 310% increase in foot traffic over baseline in 2025 (down from a 379% lift in 2024)
• Department Stores: 273% increase in 2025 foot traffic (down from 326% increase in 2024)
• Home Stores: 92% increase in 2025 (down from 103% in 2024)
• Pet Stores: 74% increase in 2025 (down from 97% in 2024)

State-Level Trends:
Some Sharp Drops, Some Steady Performers

Across most states in the study, the decline in foot traffic is evident:

• Ohio: 105% uplift over baseline in 2024 decreased to 65% uplift in 2025
• Montana: Showed the lowest increase over baseline in 2025 at ~22%
• Iowa: Enjoyed the highest uplift over baseline in 2025 at ~105%
• South Dakota: One of the few states with an increase (74% increase over baseline in 2025 vs. 65% increase over baseline in 2024)

In addition, some states stayed relatively stable YoY, including South Carolina, Virginia, Massachusetts, and North Dakota.

City-Level Trends:
Huge Swings Between Markets

Foot-traffic increases over baseline varied widely across major metro areas:

• Seattle: 23% uplift over baseline in 2025 (down from 92% in 2024)
• New York: 49% uplift in 2025 (down from 82% in 2024)
• Green Bay: 110% uplift in 2025 (down from 130%)
• Cedar Rapids: Largest uplift over baseline in 2025 at 115% in 2025 (~99% in 2024)

In addition to Cedar Rapids, a few other cities (including Miami, Memphis, and St. Louis) saw increases over their prior-year uplift.

What Does This Mean for Brands?

Despite economic headwinds and waning consumer sentiment, people are still shopping and spending as the 2025 holiday season kicks into high gear. However, and this should come as no surprise, consumers continue to change HOW they shop and spend.

In addition to choosing different channels, different timing, and different stores than prior years, AI is making an impact: AI-driven traffic to online retail pages soared 805% compared to 2024.

At first glance, the data and reported spend seem to provide more nails for the coffin of IRL retail. But don’t pronounce time-of-death just yet. In fact, many counterintuitive insights come to light when you view this study through a macro-understanding of the realities of retail cycles and trends.

While more transactions than ever occur online, in-store signals and location data continue to increase in importance for the overall health of retail brands. As more and more of our daily tasks, transactions, and responsibilities are tended to on screens, the places consumers choose to go and spend time grows in importance and meaning.

As a result, measuring actual footfalls and location data empowers brands—and their agencies—to understand how customers move across and between online and offline environments, how demand shifts across regions, and how to plan investments in location, inventory, staffing, and marketing with more precision.

Cuebiq partners with agencies, platforms, and brands to more deeply understand human behavior—and optimize campaigns by measuring their impact and ability to spark real-world visits. This allows marketers to build strategies, audiences, and campaigns informed by actual customer behavior—with customer privacy at the center of it all.

Better data leads to better questions. Better questions lead to stronger decisions. Stronger decisions lead to better performance.

To learn why Cuebiq is the trusted catalyst to spark sustained growth and returns on campaigns by measuring human behavior, contact us today or book a demo.

The post Black Friday 2025 Traffic Report first appeared on Cuebiq Group, LLC.

• Chipotle Mexican Grill saw about a 4% decline YOY
• Cava same-store growth slowed to ~2.1% (from 10.8% the previous quarter)

In a recent episode of the Wall Street Journal What’s News podcast, executives pointed to younger consumers (25-35 yrs) pulling back on QSR and fast-casual visits because of wage and expense pressures. And though they aren’t abandoning the brands they love, they’re also not showing up as often.

The interesting thing? Downticks in fast-casual have historically coincided with upticks in QSR, but recent quarter same-store sales declined 3.6% at Wendy’s and 5% at KFC.

To drive fast-casual and QSR sales, start by properly measuring human behavior

Measuring and reporting actual footfalls is a place your team can gain a real advantage. The strategy: Measure store visits, repeat visits, and uplift from campaigns with ethically-collected location data. It’s the best way to demonstrate how hard a campaign is working in an era of tighter consumer activity.

Because the truth is, to accurately gauge the impact and effectiveness of your campaign, you need to measure actual visits to a POI, not just projected or modeled behavior.

Cuebiq has seen some bright spots and effective campaigns during this era of down performance

Even as the QSR and fast-casual dining segments navigate stormy waters overall, Cuebiq has reported some exceptional campaign results to our partners in the past two quarters. The uplift metric (AKA increased store visits among those exposed to a campaign over the matching control group of those unexposed) has told some very positive stories for recent campaigns:

• National QSR saw ~9% uplift (with a Cost Per Visit of ~$1 on 46M impressions)
• National fast-casual restaurant saw ~23% uplift
• Regional fast-casual saw ~21% uplift

3. Privacy-first, transparent, and ethically collected location data is essential.

Not just to ensure legal compliance, but to nurture trust. Because while it’s hard to earn the trust of customers, it’s easier than ever to lose it.

That’s why at Cuebiq, our fully GDPR-compliant methodology is grounded in consent, transparency, control and accountability.

How can you build a sustainable location data measurement practice to drive growth?

This is about more than justifying budgets. It’s about partnering with the best and brightest to build a practice where real customer behavior is at the heart of driving and measuring true, demonstrated loyalty—and growth.

• Embed footfall measurement into your media planning so you can isolate which channels, creative and locations are driving real visits—and which are not.
• Build in repeat-visit metrics so you see beyond campaign-driven traffic, and understand whether you’re building true loyalty or driving one‐off visits.
• Partner with a location-data group who offers both exposure-to-visit models and actual measured footfall with a control group. That way you can accurately track incremental lift.
• Ensure the partner you pick has rigorous privacy and compliance frameworks, so you’re safe from regulatory or reputational risk.
• Optimize down to store-level and audience-slice level with attention toward expected behavior per industry, and don’t treat every location or action the same.
• Recognize that social and organic content can still have outsized effect; location and behavior measurement can and must span social, mobile, digital, OOH, and IRL visits. The more you can draw a direct line between online interaction and in-store experiences, the better your demonstrated ROI.

The net net is this: Fast-casual dining and QSR are facing a tougher landscape, so media and measurement must evolve to meet the challenge.

Tracking actual store visits, repeat behavior, visit lift around campaigns—and optimizing your media mix with those learnings in hand—is the way forward.

And your partner in location-data measurement should be one who gives you actual footfall numbers, not just proxies—and who treats privacy and transparency as a core value. That way you can make media decisions from the most informed place — and drive better outcomes despite stronger headwinds.

Is your location data company a trusted partner in your success? Contact us to book a demo or just have a conversation.

The post The Fast-Casual Slowdown Isn’t All Bad News first appeared on Cuebiq Group, LLC.

• Location data is retail’s most reliable signal of demand. As AI search and zero-click experiences reshape discovery, understanding where shoppers actually go has become the clearest indicator of intent.
• Q1 is a critical moment to act on behavioral shifts. Returns, gym sign-ups, travel planning, and tax preparation all mark the start of a new demand cycle.
• Cuebiq connects planning, activation, and measurement. With privacy-safe location data and incrementality-proven measurement, retailers can link real-world behaviors to ROI across every channel.

In 2025, retailers learned a hard truth: digital engagement is no longer enough. As AI search and zero-click behavior reshape how people discover products, the clearest signal of demand has shifted from clicks to real-world movement, and the ability to measure it with precision.

In 2026, leading retailers will use location data to track changing patterns, forecast demand, and allocate spend based on real-world behavior, not digital clicks.

Q1 is a reset moment for retail. Shoppers return gifts, join gyms, plan trips, and prepare for tax season. Cuebiq helps brands see these real-world behaviors as they happen, activate the right audiences, and measure how campaigns drive visits and revenue across channels.

Turning Store Visits Into Measurable Growth

In 2025, retailers proved the value of store visits. In 2026, the focus shifts from proving to performing. What looks like a post-holiday lull is actually the beginning of a new demand cycle.

According to the National Retail Federation, U.S. holiday sales grew 4 percent in 2024 to a record $994 billion, signaling a strong start to the year ahead. NRF Chief Economist Jack Kleinhenz called the season “a notable success,” citing renewed in-person shopping and healthy consumer confidence. That spending strength shifts categories in January, and the opportunity is in tracking how that energy moves from holiday gifting to new-year priorities.

As shoppers move from holiday spending into new routines — returning gifts, joining gyms, booking trips, and organizing finances — the first quarter becomes a critical window to sustain that momentum. Cuebiq’s mobility platform reveals when and where consumers re-engage with categories like fitness, wellness, and personal finance at the start of the year. Retailers who plan audiences and creative around these patterns are the ones turning early intent into measurable in-store results.

Q1 Momentum is Already Underway

Consumer activity changes direction after the holidays. As shoppers wrap up gift season, they stay active in the market through returns, exchanges, and early-year purchases. The same consumer who’s back in-store to make a return often buys something new, beginning the next phase of the retail cycle.

That shift is reflected in post-holiday data. According to Appriss Retail and Deloitte data reported by Digital Commerce 360, U.S. consumers returned $685 billion in merchandise in 2024, about 13 percent of all retail sales. In the week following Christmas, return volume climbed 12 percent year over year and total return value rose 14 percent, with many of those visits leading to exchanges or follow-on purchases.

For retailers, this marks the first measurable wave of intent in the new year. Location data captures that early movement, helping marketers spot where demand is rising while competitors are still waiting for Q1 results. Those shifts set the stage for the new routines and audience behaviors that define the first quarter.

New Year, New Routines: The Audiences That Matter Most

The first weeks of the year bring a unique opportunity. Consumer intent is already in motion, and the brands that act on it first will shape demand for the months ahead. That’s where Cuebiq’s Audience segments come in, helping marketers identify and reach the audiences whose real-world activity signals they’re ready to buy.

These audiences represent the behavioral shifts driving early-year retail: where shoppers go, what they prioritize, and how they signal intent before purchase. Rooted in verified location-based visitation data, these seasonal segments reflect where people are spending their time and attention:

• Fitness & Wellness Shoppers: Gym-goers, health-conscious buyers, and sporting-goods shoppers establishing new routines.
• Financial & Tax-Season Planners: Visitors to tax-service providers and financial institutions preparing for returns and refunds.
• Travel & Leisure Audiences: Spring-break travelers, vacation planners, and event attendees building their 2026 calendars.
• Valentine’s & Seasonal Shoppers: Jewelry buyers, candy-store visitors, and restaurant patrons planning early celebrations.

Each of these audiences is available for activation directly in The Trade Desk, LiveRamp, and other leading DSPs, ready for retailers to reach with precision across digital and offline channels.

As 2026 begins, success will come from acting on behavioral signals. Cuebiq turns those signals into strategy, helping retailers plan smarter, activate faster, and measure every visit that matters.

How Leading Brands Activate Early Intent

The strongest Q1 campaigns start early, reach the right audiences, and measure real-world movement, not just online engagement.

The strongest Q1 campaigns start early, reach the right audiences, and measure real-world movement – not just online engagement. By planning around behavioral signals rather than waiting for digital clicks, brands capture consumer intent while it’s still taking shape.

Across Cuebiq’s partner network, this approach consistently drives measurable, incremental lift. Consider Yokohama Tire: the brand ran a cookieless activation using Cuebiq’s measurement framework and achieved a 356% lift in projected in-store visits — clear proof that offline engagement can be optimized with the same precision as digital conversions.

Across industries, the takeaway is the same: brands that connect planning and measurement from the start are already outpacing those that treat them as separate steps. Whether in retail, automotive, or entertainment, Cuebiq equips marketers to identify movement trends, activate high-intent audiences, and prove ROI through verified incremental visits.

Real-world engagement is now the clearest signal of return. Cuebiq turns it into a measurable advantage, helping brands plan smarter, move faster, and prove impact across every channel.

Plan, Activate, Measure: The Continuous Loop of Proof

The brands outperforming their peers aren’t guessing. They’re following a disciplined loop: plan, activate, measure, repeat. Planning and measurement now operate as one continuous cycle where each campaign informs the next and results compound in real time.

Plan

Start early. Refresh audience segments before Q1 begins to align with emerging behaviors like wellness, renewal, and reward. Use Cuebiq’s location-based insights to see where these audiences are already moving and size each opportunity by geography or DMA. Creative and media plans built around real-world intent consistently outperform those guided by last year’s assumptions or digital proxies.

Activate

Once audiences are defined, reach them wherever they spend time, online and in the physical world. Combine search, social, CTV, and OOH to connect consistent messaging with verified movement patterns. Cuebiq’s integrations across major DSPs such as The Trade Desk and LiveRamp make it seamless to turn audience intelligence into live campaigns that reach real consumers in the moments that matter most.

Measure

Don’t wait for the quarter to end to evaluate performance. With Cuebiq’s real-time dashboards, marketers can validate incremental lift, track Cost Per Incremental Visit (CPIV), and compare visit-rate efficiency by DMA as campaigns run. That visibility powers the next round of planning, closing the loop between insight and action. Learn more in Cuebiq’s Incrementality White Paper.

The “store-first” mindset that once defined measurement now extends upstream into strategy. With Cuebiq, planning, activation, and measurement function as one connected system, giving retailers the agility to spot shifting demand, act faster, and prove performance across every channel.

Why Location Data Will Define Retail Wins in 2026

Retail’s next competitive edge will come from visibility into real-world behavior. As AI search and zero-click experiences reshape product discovery, brands are losing access to the digital signals that once defined intent. At the same time, evolving privacy standards are making reach and attribution harder to track through traditional data sources.

In this new environment, location data has become the most reliable signal of demand. It reveals where consumers go, how they move through markets, and when they’re ready to buy — insights digital metrics can’t match. Cuebiq makes those signals actionable, connecting audience movement to measurable outcomes across every channel.

Cuebiq’s platform is built on three principles that make that visibility meaningful:

• Privacy-first architecture that maintains compliance without sacrificing precision.
• Incrementality-proven measurement that quantifies true causal lift across campaigns.
• Real-time intelligence that unifies planning, activation, and measurement in one system.

In 2026, success will belong to the retailers who can interpret and act on real-world intent faster than their competitors. Cuebiq gives them the clarity to do exactly that.

Capture the Next Wave of Retail Demand

The next demand cycle is already forming. Cuebiq gives you the visibility to find high-intent audiences, reach them in real time, and prove every visit that drives growth.

Explore Cuebiq Audiences

FAQ

Why does location data matter for retailers in 2026?

AI search and zero-click experiences have reduced visibility into online behavior. Location data shows where shoppers actually go, giving retailers a real-time view of intent and demand.

How does Cuebiq protect consumer privacy?

Cuebiq’s platform is built on a privacy-first framework that complies with GDPR and CCPA, using anonymized, aggregated, consent-based data.

What makes Cuebiq’s measurement approach different?

Cuebiq’s incrementality-proven model isolates true causal lift, showing how exposure drives store visits and delivering clear metrics like Cost Per Incremental Visit (CPIV).

How can retailers activate Cuebiq Audiences?
Cuebiq Audiences, based on verified location data, are available in major DSPs like The Trade Desk and LiveRamp to reach high-intent consumers in real time.

The post Why Retail Location Data Is the Advantage for Q1 2026 Planning first appeared on Cuebiq Group, LLC.

The post The New Reality for Retail: Why Driving and Proving Store Traffic is Non-Negotiable first appeared on Cuebiq Group, LLC.