Motionworks Placecast™ Select provides a complete profile of activity at a Motionworks Place or Region during specific dates and times. These insights are produced with the Motionworks Population Intelligence Platform. Placecast™ Select is best used to understand all the dimensions of activity at an individual place or group of places (all movie theaters in a market) during user-specified dates/times. This could be to understand a single event (concert over 6 hours at a location) or groups of events over time (movies in the park on the third Saturday of each month last summer). The dimensions of data include:

• Reference to a Motionworks place or Motionworks place set
• Activities — visits + dropoffs, split by a dwell-time threshold. (Zero-dwell pass-bys are reported separately and are not counted as activities.)
• Activities by long-distance travelers (50mi from home).
• Activities by demographic segment.
• Activities by top consumer segment.
• Home locations of guests by:
  • Surrounding neighborhood or postal code.
  • Nationwide by State, County, or Metropolitan Area.
• Standard dwell time distributions.

Scenario Requests

In order to facilitate a Placecast™ Select analysis, the user must provide certain input data that defines the scenario being analyzed.

The following are required:

• A single Motionworks Place or a Motionworks Place set.
• Timeframe - A specific date and time or set of dates and times. These should be provided in the same time zone as the place or places included in the scenario.

The following are optional:

• Motionworks segment IDs - The scenario will return top segments, but if specific segments are needed, the identifiers should be provided to ensure they are included. More information is available on Population, Consumer, and PRIZM segment.
• Runtime version - The Placecast Select version to run, given as 2.2, 2.3, or 2.4 (the v2_2 / v2_3 / v2_4 form is also accepted). Defaults to 2.4. Versions differ in their multiplier tables, dwell-time thresholds, and available date coverage.

For the complete request object — every field, whether it is required or optional, its type, and an example JSON payload — see Placecast Select Requests.

Scenario Response Dimensions

• Frequency Published by request.
• Geographic coverage Summarizes activities for residents of the U.S. for Motionworks Places and Regions.
• Zone systems Not applicable. No zone systems are used in reporting data in this schema.
• Date availability Depends on the runtime version — v2_2 (2010 geographies) and v2_3 (2020 geographies) cover September 2023 through June 2026; v2_4 (default; 2020 geographies) runs from September 2024 through the current latency period.
• Latency Data are available on a 15-day latency. For example, by 27 March 2023, data through 12 March 2023 will be available.

Scenario Response Schema

Each scenario returns a single response object carrying the scenario metadata, the cohort analyzed, the visit / dropoff / passby / activity / exposure metric families (each with confidence intervals and cohort / total variants), population context, and the percent breakdowns detailed below. For the complete field-by-field schema — every metric, its type, and an example JSON payload — see Placecast Select Responses.

Household Demographics and Privacy

All of our demographics, even if person-level, like age or gender, are estimated by considering the demographic profiles of the household unit. If we observe visits from a neighborhood characterized by households that tend to be single parents as well as multi-generational, all of this neighborhood-typical household’s ages contribute to the characterization of the estimated visit. Specifically, let’s say a neighborhood's typical household tends to have equal distributions of people in age segments 0-17, 35-44, and 75+. If we observe visits to a bar from this neighborhood, the percentage of visits by age segment at the bar would be 33.3% for each of the three age segments.

JSON Schema

All metrics reported as percentages are rounded to the nearest tenth of a percent, where 25.1 is 25.1%.

Percent Visits

Percent of visits by a variety of dimensions, including demographic segments and home locations. Some of these dimensions are mutually exclusive groups, and some of them overlap. These differences determine whether all possible categories within the groups are reported and what the sum of the percentages should equal. The bulleted list highlights these differences, and the JSON sample below demonstrates the format of the object.

Each entry under the segment dimension carries a motionworks_segment_id, the stable identifier for that population segment. Look up an id in the segment reference libraries: Population Segments, Consumer Segments, and PRIZM Segments.

The dwell_bins break the scenario's exposures down by dwell time — the duration of each individual exposure at the place — reported as a share of all exposures in the scenario. These are per-exposure dwell buckets, not a per-person daily total.

{
  "dwell_bins": [
    {
      "id": "exposures_dwell_000_030min",
      "description": "Less than 30 minutes",
      "value": 0.5456
    },
    {
      "id": "exposures_dwell_030_060min",
      "description": "30 minutes to 59 minutes",
      "value": 0.2342
    },
    {
      "id": "exposures_dwell_060_120min",
      "description": "1 hour to 1 hour 59 minutes",
      "value": 0.1689
    },
    {
      "id": "exposures_dwell_120_240min",
      "description": "2 hours to 3 hours 59 minutes",
      "value": 0.0272
    },
    {
      "id": "exposures_dwell_240min_plus",
      "description": "4 hours or more",
      "value": 0.0241
    }
  ],
  "segment": {
    "basic_demographics": [
      {
        "category": "age",
        "segments": [
          {
            "description": "Population, Age 0 - 17",
            "exposure_index": 1.24,
            "activity_index": 1.25,
            "visits_index": 1.28,
            "exposure_penetration": 0.2748,
            "activity_penetration": 0.2750,
            "visits_penetration": 0.2821,
            "market_persons": 380000000,
            "motionworks_segment_id": "c3649875967afb92"
          },
          {
            "description": "Population, Age 25 - 34",
            "exposure_index": 0.98,
            "activity_index": 0.98,
            "visits_index": 1.02,
            "exposure_penetration": 0.1624,
            "activity_penetration": 0.1624,
            "visits_penetration": 0.1682,
            "market_persons": 290000000,
            "motionworks_segment_id": "e2b4ebd9b407ad9c"
          },
          ...
        ]
      },
      {
        "category": "age_plus",
        "segments": [
          {
            "description": "All Persons",
            "exposure_index": 1.00,
            "activity_index": 1.00,
            "visits_index": 1.00,
            "exposure_penetration": 1.2749,
            "activity_penetration": 1.2750,
            "visits_penetration": 1.2821,
            "market_persons": 1700000000,
            "motionworks_segment_id": "21d529097c81af04"
          },
          {
            "description": "Population, Age 21+",
            "exposure_index": 0.96,
            "activity_index": 0.96,
            "visits_index": 0.95,
            "exposure_penetration": 0.9574,
            "activity_penetration": 0.9575,
            "visits_penetration": 0.9549,
            "market_persons": 1320000000,
            "motionworks_segment_id": "2ad53adfc6677f71"
          },
          ...
        ]
      },
      ...
    ],
    ...
  },
  "home": {
    "state_province": [
      {
        "id": "50",
        "alias": "VT",
        "description": "Vermont",
        "value": 0.252
      },
      {
        "id": "33",
        "alias": "NH",
        "description": "New Hampshire",
        "value": 0.137
      },
      ...
    ],
    ...
  }
}

Small Mutually-Exclusive Dimensions

The following dimensions have mutually exclusive groups and include a small enough set of groups that all of the groups are reported. In these cases, the sum of all of the values will generally equal 100, except in the case of rounding error.

• dwell_bins
• segment:basic_demographics:age See the Household Demographics and Privacy section for details on how this is estimated.
• segment:basic_demographics:hh_income
• segment:basic_demographics:race See the Household Demographics and Privacy section for details on how this is estimated.
• segment:basic_demographics:gender See the Household Demographics and Privacy section for details on how this is estimated.
• segment:basic_demographics:ethnicity See the Household Demographics and Privacy section for details on how this is estimated.
• segment:basic_demographics:prizm
• home:state_province Labeled by 2-digit FIPS code (including leading zeros).
• home:dma Labeled by DMA identifier.

Large, Mutually-Exclusive Dimensions

The following home dimensions also have mutually exclusive groups, but with many more groups. Every home geography with observed visits is reported, each normalized so the dimension sums to ~100 (rounding aside); the values are not truncated.

• home:metro_area Labeled by core-based statistical area (CBSA) identifier in the United States.
• home:county Labeled by 5-digit county FIPS code (including leading zeros).
• home:postal_code Labeled by 5-digit postal code.
• home:census_neighborhood Labeled by block group's 12-digit FIPS code (including leading zeros) in the United States and by dissemination area's 8-digit identifier in Canada.

Overlapping Dimensions

The following dimensions have overlapping groups, so a person can fall into more than one and the values do not sum to 100. For the segment:consumer:* dimensions, only the most relevant segments are returned — the top 10 by exposure, plus any segment whose exposure, activity, or visits index exceeds 1.05.

• segment:basic_demographics:age_plus
• segment:consumer:alcohol
• segment:consumer:automotive
• segment:consumer:commuting_and_transportation
• segment:consumer:digital_video_displays
• segment:consumer:environment
• segment:consumer:financial
• segment:consumer:food_and_beverages
• segment:consumer:health
• segment:consumer:items_in_the_home
• segment:consumer:mri_apparel_and_jewelry
• segment:consumer:mri_home_improvements
• segment:consumer:mri_psychographics
• segment:consumer:restaurants
• segment:consumer:retail_shopping
• segment:consumer:sports_and_leisure
• segment:consumer:telecommunications
• segment:consumer:travel
• segment:consumer:voting