sign In contact

Radio Media Measurement with Westwood One 

Posted on: January 12th, 2024 by Jaclyn Giordano

Motionworks partnered with Westwood One to assess the impact of audio advertising on foot traffic to tax preparation locations.

Motionworks segmented visitation to target locations in DMAs with light, medium, and heavy investment in audio advertising. Results demonstrated a correlation between media exposure and lifts in foot traffic to the tax preparation facilities.

Let’s dig into the medium, the measurement and the results.

The first radio ad aired on August 22,1922 on WEAF in New York City by a real estate company called Queensboro Corporation. The first radio commercial was 15 minutes long and advertised apartment offerings in Jackson Heights, Queens.

Fast forward to 1994, and we have the first online ad appear. On October 27, 1994, the world of advertising was forever transformed by a small graphic bearing the presumptive words, “Have you ever clicked your mouse right here? You will.” And just like that, the digital advertising era had officially begun.

The explosive adoption of digital advertising introduced attribution metrics the world had never seen, leaving many traditional forms of media in the dust. And, while there have been many advancements in radio advertising effectiveness measurement, it can still be challenging, even for the most tech-savvy marketer – but not with Motionworks.

With the Motionworks Placecast® product, media publishers, brands, and marketers can understand foot traffic lift to business locations, as well as how media campaign weight in a market can affect visitations across DMAs.

Motionworks helped The Cumulus Media | Westwood One Audio Active Group® understand the effectiveness of radio campaigns for a tax preparedness client across various radio formats and multiple DMAs.

Here’s what we found:
Markets receiving heavy AM/FM radio campaign investment received significantly greater unique location visitation activity for the tax preparation service brand than markets with light media weight.

We also observed that a heavier media weight in March, vs a lighter weight in April, yielded a 34% increase in unique for the tax preparedness client. In addition, DMAs with a heavier media weight in March outperformed on unique visitations vs. DMAs utilizing light to medium weight.

 

Key Takeaways: 

Radio measurement and analysis doesn’t have to be complicated or difficult to execute with the Motionworks Placecast Product.  

Media publishers, agencies, and brands can access foot traffic data to hundreds of thousands of locations in the Motionworks platform, generate their own polygons, and create customized place sets for the locations that matter for every campaign analysis.

Ready to Dive into Media Measurement? 

The Motionworks team is here to empower you with reliable and robust Population Intelligence to help you measure the world of media with confidence. Connect with us for a demo today.  

Meet the Motionworks ® Cast: Aaron Baxter, Analytics Engineer

Posted on: October 24th, 2023 by Jaclyn Giordano

Motionworks® Cast Spotlight: Aaron Baxter, Analytics Engineer

It’s been an inspiring year here at Motionworks® with the launch of our new products- Popcast™ and Placecast®, securing a successful series A round, and adding many new talented people to the team as we work to accelerate growth and deliver the highest level of Population Data to the world.  

We are excited to kick off a new series of blogs that will feature the amazing people who work diligently behind the scenes to make sure you have the best customer experience with Motionworks® – The Leader in Population Intelligence. 

For our first Motionworks® Meet the Cast moment, we sat down with Aaron Baxter, Analytics Engineer, to talk about life, work and his population data journey with Motionworks®.  

 

Q: Tell us a little about your background and how you landed at Motionworks®? 

A: My first jobs were framing art supplies at my Mom’s art shop, pulling nails at my dad’s construction site, and ripping stitches/selling smoked fish at a custom embroidery and retail fish shop in my hometown. During High School I was also often found in the pit orchestra of many a community musical, when I wasn’t on stage playing punk-funk in the basement of the local Legion or community hall.   

During university, I worked in construction and tree planting, as well as the dish pits of many different kitchens.  I also became mildly obsessed with vegan organic waffles and co-founded the “House of Pain” vegan wafflerie – selling bulk waffles to the fine people of Montreal. I only ever made enough money  to cover the cost of ingredients. 

After graduating with a Master of Environment in Impact Assessment, I started as an Environmental Planner, then later as a Land Use se Planner and eventually Transportation planning – always drawing on my technical background in web development and GIS to assist in the planning process.  

Some of my favorite jobs during this period were to plan and design the expansion of the bike share network in Toronto, as well as the Winnipeg Transit Master Plan. This involved a complete redesign of their existing network. This is also when I really started to dig into the profession of population movement analysis.  

I chose Motionworks® initially because I respected and admired their approach to population modeling, then secondly because the people are just so damn awesome.

Q: What is a typical week for you and how do you stay energized, while balancing life and remote work responsibilities? 

A: I help get the kids off to school in the morning after a dog walk in the woods to get a little nature in. I usually start my workday with the trickiest technical bits, then move into lateral, organizational and social projects.

I like to mix in difficult tasks along with super fun challenges to stay on top of product updates, ad hoc requests and any bug squashing that needs to be addressed.   

Walks with my dog, a healthy diet, making beautiful memories with the people I love, and a little music on my keyboard or guitar keep me energized throughout the week. I believe that embracing the chaos of work and life, with an organized space and an occasional cohabitant apology, helps keep balance in a remote work environment. 

 

Q: What’s your next milestone here at Motionworks® and how do you define success? 

I love creating digital population twins, scenario modeling and impact predictions coming from the Transportation Planning sector. I can’t wait to get Canada data incorporated into our full product suite, along with upgraded product planning tools.

Further penetrating the Canada market will be a huge milestone I am excited to support. 

Having decent and compassionate kids, who are also a lot of fun, is my greatest achievement and would define success as the ability to offer my time and support to my family and community without limits.  

 

Q: Any final thoughts or advice for people just entering the world of understanding population movement data? 

Spending time in your community is the essential population movement factor. Always remember to balance all the numbers with a bit of empathy. 

Population Intelligence for Restaurants

Posted on: September 19th, 2023 by Jaclyn Giordano

Population Intelligence Delivers a Competitive Advantage for Restaurant Growth

Restaurant sales rose for the 6th straight month this year, according to the National Restaurant Association. In fact, restaurant spending outpaced all other retail sectors with an increase of 4%, compared to only 1% of non-restaurant retail. 

With over 1 million plus restaurant locations in the US and consumer demand on the rise, sparking a growing number of new openings, Motionworks® population intelligence can deliver the competitive edge to keep your restaurant growing in a saturated market. 

What is Motionworks®? 

Motionworks® provides past, present, and predictive insights on how the total population moves throughout the physical world. Everywhere. All the time.  

Our Citycast™ proprietary Population Intelligence Platform insights suite, delivers restaurant marketers answers to population movement as it relates to the roads we travel on, the ads we see on billboards, the retailers we visit and the places we choose to vacation. This means, with Motionworks® Population Intelligence, restaurants can make business decisions more confidently, based on human behavior in an aggregated AND privacy compliant way.  

How Can Motionworks® Help Restaurants? 

Allow us to introduce you to the Placecast® and Popcast™ products that deliver insights into the places people visit, as well as, how they move about the world throughout the day in your restaurant trade area.  

What is Placecast®? 

Placecast® provides robust visitation insights into millions of POIs (points of interest) across the US. These POIs include small locations, such as stand-alone fast-food restaurants, large geographies, such as city centers and regional parks, and even billboards on the side of the road.

Restaurants can understand who is visiting a POI (points of interest), how long they are staying, the neighborhoods they live in, how often they visit, and what they like to consume.  

How Can Placecast® Empower Your Restaurant Business?

Foot Traffic Analytics: How do my daily traffic patterns compare to my competition? 

Location planning: Is there an opportunity to open a new location based on the geographic area customers are traveling from?  

Attribution analysis: Did our business grow in the zip codes where we leveraged direct mail? 

 

Placecast® in Action:

What is Popcast™? 

Popcast ™ allows you to visualize the population of Motionworks® along with custom cohorts occupying specific geographies throughout the day in the US. Popcast™ allows restaurants to look at population data from the zip code level all the way up to state geographies. 

How can Popcast™ empower your restaurant business? 

Audience activation: Where is my ideal restaurant customer composition geographically located to maximize my marketing efforts and increase ROI with my direct mail, local radio, and OOH (Out of Home) campaigns?  

Customer acquisition: Where can I find more of my best patrons to scale and how can I reach my competitors’ customers as they move throughout the day to conquest?   

Location planning: Where should I consider opening my next organic restaurant based on where potential health-conscious people live? 

Three easy ways to access Motionworks® Population Intelligence: 

  1. API: Direct integration into third-party platforms 
  2. Snowflake: Download data directly 
  3. Citycast ™: Motionworks® proprietary platform 

The Motionworks® team is here to empower you with reliable and robust Population Intelligence to make restaurant growth decisions with confidence. Connect with us for a demo today.  

Motionworks® Closes $9.3 Million Series A Round

Posted on: September 12th, 2023 by Jaclyn Giordano

We are excited to announce Motionworks® International has closed a successful Series A Funding Round of $9.3 Million.

This investment will enable Motionworks® to support our growing customer base and scale our Population Intelligence solutions into new markets.

Read the official press release below:

Motionworks®, a disruptive solution in the population intelligence market, is pleased to announce its Series A funding round of $9.3 million. The funding round was led by Blue Heron Capital with participation from Motley Fool Ventures and Hybrid Capital. These funds will facilitate product development, expand operations, enhance user experiences, and allow the company to accelerate the rapid growth of its Population Intelligence solutions into new markets worldwide.

Motionworks®was founded in 2017 by Matthew Martimo and Ryan Kinskey to revolutionize how businesses access and analyze population movement in the physical world.  This investment will empower the company’s mission to make mobility data and location intelligence more attainable and actionable for technical and non-technical users alike.

Motionworks® uses geospatial technology and exceptional data scientists, engineers, and UX experts to curate past, present, and predictive insights on how the total population moves throughout the physical world – everywhere, all the time. The company’s industry expertise includes travel, retail, real estate, transportation, city planning, and multiple media channels. Motionworks® data fuels the currency for the out-of-home (OOH) advertising industry across North America and is leveraged by more than 400 companies through Motionworks’® proprietary technology suite, Citycast™.

“For years, data-driven decisions backed by population intelligence have been available only to organizations with substantial resources. We strongly believe that these powerful insights should be accessible to all businesses and agencies, regardless of their size and technical understanding,” said Ryan Kinskey, CEO. “We are truly gratified to have the endorsement and backing of such a respected group of investors as we strive to scale our vision for all businesses.”

As part of the round, Blue Heron Operating Advisors Ed Kennedy and Lenn Kurtzman will join the Motionworks® Board of Directors. Ed brings over thirty years of global executive leadership and technology expertise to Fortune 500 companies and entrepreneurial technology-based firms. Lenn has more than twenty years of experience as a Chief Financial Officer for early to mid-stage technology companies.

“Motionworks® is a unique platform disrupting the population movement analytics market with easy-to-use technology,” said Ed Kennedy, Blue Heron Operating Advisor. “We’re excited to be working with Ryan and the entire team at Motionworks® to continue their impressive growth trajectory.”

Recently showcased as one of the most promising, innovative tech companies in the Southeast, Motionworks® has been expanding its population intelligence data products and software solutions to help empower its rapidly growing customer base with accurate, up-to-date information on human mobility. Motionworks® solutions are currently available in the United States and Canada with plans for expansion into new geographies.

About Motionworks®  

Motionworks® is the trusted population intelligence expert that empowers customers with privacy-compliant, innovative data solutions to help them make smarter and more confident decisions. Motionworks® represents the merging of three principal expertise areas in the mobility space: high volume and high velocity data processing, generative modeling, and intuitive front-end user interfaces for non-technical users. Its diverse portfolio encompasses areas such as advertising, city planning, tourism, transportation engineering, and retail. Powered by geospatial technology, machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI), along with exceptional data scientists, engineers, and user experience experts, Motionworks® delivers a wide range of high-value mobility insights that provide historical, real-time, and predictive intelligence about how people move around the globe.  

About Blue Heron Capital  

Blue Heron Capital is an early-stage equity firm funding big ideas in enterprise and healthcare technology. Using the powerful combination of financial capital and human capital of their OA collaborative, they build businesses that make big impacts. For more information, please visit https://www.blueheroncap.com/.  

About Motley Fool Ventures  

Motley Fool Ventures is a member-based venture capital firm focused on early-stage private companies and is an affiliate of The Motley Fool.  For more information, please visit https://foolventures.com/.  

About Hybrid Capital 

Hybrid Capital helps entrepreneurs access better capital. They invest in technology and tech enabled services businesses. For more information, please visit https://www.linkedin.com/company/hybrid-capital-partners/about 

Press Contact: Kym Frank, [email protected]

Introducing Placecast® Syndicated 

Posted on: September 1st, 2023 by Jaclyn Giordano

Placecast® Syndicated provides robust insights into visitation to points of interest (POIs) across North America.

Location intelligence has never been more important and valuable for business decision makers as we move into a cookie-less, digital world with increasing regulations on privacy compliance. It’s becoming more difficult for marketers to find their target online in a fragmented digital universe. More decision makers are utilizing population intelligence data on how people move in the physical world. Where they live, where they work, where they play and where they travel are just a few data points helping marketers make more intelligent decisions. 

This post will help you understand everything you need to know about Motionworks® Placecast® Syndicated location data intelligence.

What is Placecast® Syndicated?

Placecast® Syndicated provides robust insights into visitation to points of interest (POIs) across North America in the Motionworks® Citycast™ platform. Motionworks® POIs include small locations, such as stand-alone fast food restaurants, large geographies, such as a beach or state park, and even billboards on the side of a road. 

Users can understand who is visiting a POI, how long they are staying, the neighborhoods they live in, how often they visit, and what they like to buy – making it a valuable tool for any business to utilize for intelligent decision-making. 

What type of location data intelligence does it provide?

Weekly activity. Get insights on historical and near-real time location data on the weekly activity history of places and regions from the beginning of 2019 to present.

Audience Insights. Understand and analyze in-depth profiling information on the types of people who visited a place or region. This includes information on standard demographics such as age, income, and race. It also provides  information on thousands of audience segments such as brand preferences, intent to purchase, media consumption, political affiliation, banking, and more. 

Origin Information. Placecast® Syndicated contains robust data on the neighborhoods in which visitors live. This data is anonymously aggregated to zip codes, counties, CBSAs, DMAs, or State so that users can understand which areas are contributing the most visitation to their venue (or their competitors’ venues) to optimize marketing, site selection, and more.  

What types of population activity is analyzed?

Motionworks® believes in responsible data and has established normative dwell thresholds by venue type to determine what constitutes an actual visit versus a drop off or a someone simply passing by.

Users can analyze location visitation activity by visits, dropoffs, passbys and stays. In addition, the location data can be broken out by total visits in any given week or unique visits, just like website analytics. Motionworks® even provides the ability to remove employees, or cut the data based on local versus non-local visitation.

How can Placecast® empower your business?

Foot Traffic Analytics. 

What zip codes should I be using with my direct mail campaign to grow repeat business on current visitors?

What are the population analytics on my best performing stores?

How do my daily traffic patterns compare to my competition?

Location planning. 

Is there an opportunity to open a new location based on the geographic areas customers are traveling from?

What is the best place in the city to open a new store based on competitor traffic performance?

Is this commercial property the best place to lease based on who my target demographic is?

Accelerating Advertising Revenue.

Do I have the right geographical media coverage based on where my customers are traveling from?

How can I optimize my digital media based on my top performing zip codes?

What cable TV zones should I consider to maximize my marketing investment?

Attribution analysis.

Is our messaging growing the desired demographic age group?

Did our business grow in the zip codes where we leveraged direct mail?

Are my marketing efforts impacting visitations?

Placecast® Syndicated in action: Example

Myrtle Beach, SC was recently named the #1 fastest-growing place in the US. (source: Real Estate-US News)

Looking at location data for a local Home Depot in our Citycast™ platform, the population appears to be doing some home improvement projects as they settle into this vacation hot spot. Check a few data visitation data points below. 

Three Easy Ways to Access Placecast® Syndicated Location Data Intelligence: 

  1. API: Direct integration into third-party platforms.
  2. Snowflake: Download data directly.
  3. Citycast™: Motionworks® proprietary software. 

 

Ready to dive into Placecast® Syndicated? We’re here to help. Book a demo here.

Data Intelligence for Urban Planning

Posted on: July 28th, 2023 by Jaclyn Giordano

Data science is becoming an integral component of urban planning. Yet, many planners are still uncomfortable utilizing the data, connecting it to their workflows, and understanding what options are available for management and visualization.   

Our very own Cynthia Albright, FAICP, CUD, GISP, Vice President of Planning here at Motionworks® delivered valuable insights for the Carolina Planning Journal on the advantages and application of mobility data for more intelligent urban planning decisions.   

Founded in 1974, the Carolina Planning Journal is housed within the Department of City and Regional Planning at UNC Chapel Hill. Their vision aims to create cutting-edge content that inspires practitioners, academics, and students through real-world insights.  

Cynthia embraced population intelligence early. She was fascinated by the ability to aggregate device sightings by pre-defined geographies and apply that to her work in transportation, multimodal planning and transit by identifying population volumes, times of travel, travel days, home locations, work locations and much more. She was part of a team that won the National Gold Award for Transportation Planning from the American Planning Association in 2019 for a project completed for the Tahoe Transportation District. 

Advocating for data utilization in planning, Cynthia believes it is important to recognize that population intelligence can aid in advancing social infrastructure equity in communities with regards to essential public services, public transit, bike share access, and opportunities to improve pedestrian and bicycle experiences.  

The article covers insights into population movement intelligence, urban planning agency applications, understanding pricing models and data curation. “A successful economic development plan requires a clear understanding of the market, including employers, employees, home and work locations, transportation services and usage, and popular commercial destinations,” writes Cynthia.  

Motionworks® International provides responsible urban planning data solutions to municipal agencies, universities, financial institutions, engineering firms, and real estate developers in near real-time.   

Motionworks’® transportation data profiles person trips, not vehicle trips, based on our synthetic population that represents the movements of over 300+ million people. We help our customers access observed travel patterns, person itineraries, and places data on a nationwide scale for transportation solutions.  

How can we help you utilize population intelligence on your next Urban Planning project? Let’s connect.  
 

Introducing Popcast™ at Home

Posted on: July 17th, 2023 by Jaclyn Giordano

Popcast™ at Home provides users the ability to quantify the population of Motionworks® and Custom Cohorts residing within specific geographies. 

This means you can analyze population intelligence on people living in neighborhoods across the United States and Canada. 

You will get insights into geographies and custom cohorts like: 

The Popcast™ at Home Product Delivers: 

Audience Activation. 

Thinking about a direct mail, local radio, or targeted OOH campaign?  Utilize Popcast™ data for local and regional marketing initiatives by quantifying audiences by count, as well as composition in specific geographies.  

Customer Acquisition.  

Ready to conquest competitor’s locations or scale efforts based on your best customers?  Popcast™ will help you understand how many potential customers are living within a specific place, as well as where your competitors’ customers are.  

Location Planning. 

Looking to expand your franchise or retail store based on where your future customers live? Popcast™ quantifies the types of people who live in various areas of a region so you can optimize your real estate placement strategy, infrastructure installation, and your coordinating marketing. 

 

Popcast™ at Home Can Integrate with Your Data Sets: 

Motionworks can integrate first- or third-party data into our solution to identify unique audiences and scale them to the full population.  Here are a few integrations thought starters: 

Popcast™ at Home is Built to Help: 

Marketers: Understand your potential market in nearby postal codes to maximize your marketing budget.

Publishers: Recommend targeted inventory to your advertisers based on the residence of their ideal audience.

Agencies: Help your clients visualize where their customers live and show them how to best reach them using OOH.

Integrators: Connect the geographies of target residences to your DSP for audience targeting and plan optimization.

Retailers: Pinpoint the best location for your next store within walking distance of your customers’ homes.

 

Get Data to Answer Questions Like: 

How many people are living in Charleston, South Carolina that are in the market for an electric vehicle?

What neighborhoods in Denver should I advertise in to reach the highest number of people who drink craft beer? 

Where should I consider putting my next organic coffee shop in Florida based on where potential eco-conscious coffee drinkers live?  

What 5 markets should I buy for my national OOH campaign to reach the highest number of wealthy soccer fans?  

Three Easy Ways to Access Popcast™ at Home Population Intelligence: 

  1. API: Direct integration into third-party platforms.
  2. Snowflake: Download data directly.
  3. Citycast™: Motionworks® proprietary software. 

 

Ready to dive into Popcast™ at Home? We’re here to help. Book a demo here.