Visitor Profiling

Visitor profiling is an analytics practice that characterizes the people who visit a physical location—store, mall, restaurant, or event—by inferring their demographic attributes, lifestyle segments, and behavioral patterns from mobility and census data, without accessing personally identifiable information.

Mobility dataMobility DataMobility data consists of anonymized location observations from mobile devices that capture how people move through g... providers determine where a location's visitors likely reside (using home-detection algorithms), then overlay census-block-level demographics and commercial segmentation data onto those home areas. If 40 percent of a store's visitors are inferred to live in census tracts with median household incomes above $100,000, the store's visitor profile skews affluent. Providers also analyze visitors' other location behaviors—what other stores, restaurants, and activity categories they frequent—to build behavioral and affinity profiles that go beyond demographics.

Retailers compare visitor profiles across their store portfolio to tailor assortment and marketing by location. Brands analyze competitor visitor profiles to identify conquest opportunities—segments that shop at rivals but not at the brand's own stores. Real estate developers profile the visitors to a proposed site's surrounding venues to validate demand assumptions. Media buyers use visitor profiles to build audience segments for geo-targeted advertising campaigns. Visitor profiling turns anonymous foot traffic into rich audience intelligence, empowering location-dependent businesses to understand and serve their customers more effectively.