For brands with physical locations, digital advertising success isn’t just about clicks or impressions. While online metrics show how ads perform on screen, they don’t always reflect what happens in the real world. Footfall attribution helps marketers understand how digital ads influence in-store visits, offering clearer insight into how media drives physical traffic.
Below, we’ll break down how footfall attribution works and why it matters for measuring digital advertising impact.
Footfall attribution uses privacy-compliant, aggregated location data to understand consumer movement. When a person is exposed to a digital ad and has opted in to share location information on their device, that anonymous data can later be used to identify visits to a specific store or location.
Marketers define store locations using virtual boundaries, often referred to as geofences. If a device enters that area within a set period after ad exposure, it may be counted as a visit. To ensure accuracy, results are typically compared against a control group that was not exposed to the ad. This helps determine whether increased store traffic is likely tied to advertising rather than normal footfall trends.
Importantly, footfall attribution focuses on trends and performance at scale — not on tracking individual people.
Why it Matters
For retailers, restaurants, and other brick and mortar businesses, footfall attribution provides a deeper level of measurement than online metrics alone.
Understand real-world impact: See how digital ads influence physical store visits, not just online engagement.
Evaluate campaign effectiveness: Identify which channels, creatives, or audiences are driving in-store traffic.
Inform smarter decisions: Use insights from footfall data to refine media strategy and allocate budget more effectively.
For Example:
Consider a brand running a digital campaign to promote a limited-time in-store offer. Footfall attribution can help determine whether customers who were exposed to the ads were more likely to visit a store during the promotion period than those who weren’t. With tools that support this type of measurement, marketers can more confidently assess which campaigns are influencing real-world behavior.
Beyond measurement, these insights can be used to optimize future campaigns — from refining audience targeting to adjusting creative and media mix based on what drives store visits.
What’s Needed to Support Footfall Attribution
Cybba BrickMatch supports footfall attribution by aligning digital campaign exposure with in-store signals such as visits and purchases. It uses anonymized data from sources like POS and CRM systems and securely matches that information with advertising touchpoints to identify broader performance trends.
By bringing offline outcomes into the measurement process, Cybba BrickMatch helps marketers better understand how digital media contributes to foot traffic and in-store sales, providing additional context alongside traditional digital metrics.
Want a clearer view of how your digital ads drive in-store visits? Let's chat!