Using footfall to judge outdoor advertising sites
A poster is worth what the people near it see. How to read footfall and road speeds for billboards and street panels, and what neither can promise an advertiser.
For outdoor advertising, footfall is a good proxy for how much time people spend near a panel, which is closer to what a poster needs than a simple headcount: someone waiting at a crossing or a bus stop has time to read it, someone striding past barely glances. Use footfall to rank pavement-level sites against each other and to pick the hours and days a digital screen should carry its best-paying adverts. For panels aimed at drivers, add road speed: slow traffic means more time to read. Neither figure is an audience count, and you should never sell it as one.
This guide is for media owners deciding which sites to build or renew, agencies choosing panels for a campaign, and brands checking what they are being offered. It explains why people-hours suit posters, how to treat pavement and roadside sites differently, an example from Madrid, and the claims to avoid.
Why time spent suits posters
Mobility Footfall counts people-hours of presence: every hour someone spends in the area adds one. A square where people sit, a queue for a tram, a corner with a long red light: all build up people-hours, and all are places where an advert gets looked at. A fast pavement with the same number of passers-by builds up fewer.
That happens to line up with how posters work. It is not perfect: a person on a bench facing away from the panel still counts. But it ranks sites the right way round far more often than a plain count of people would.
Pavement sites and roadside sites
| Kind of site | The figure that matters | Block |
|---|---|---|
| Bus shelters, street panels, station walls, mall entrances | Footfall within 50 to 200 m, its busiest hour and day | Mobility Footfall |
| Billboards facing a road | Road speed and jam factor at the hours the board is lit | Traffic Flow |
| Large screens at junctions | Both: people on the pavement and drivers in the queue | Both |
Road speed is live; footfall covers days that ended about ten days ago.
Traffic Flow gives the speed on the roads around each site right now, the speed when they are free, a jam factor from 0 to 10 and a level in words. It does not count cars. A board on a road crawling at 15 km/h in the evening is read; one on a road at 80 km/h is a blur. Since the speeds are measured when the flow runs, schedule the check for the hours the board matters, for example weekdays at 08:00 and 18:00. The reading is explained in road speed, free-flow speed and the jam factor.
An example: renewing street panels in Madrid
A made-up case. A media owner has 40 street panels in Madrid up for renewal and budget to upgrade ten to digital screens. It measures 30 days of footfall within 100 m of every panel. Suppose the top of the list looks like this (invented for illustration):
| Panel | Footfall a day | Busiest hour | Busiest day | Evening share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plaza panel | 34,000 | 19:00 | Saturday | 41% |
| Office avenue panel | 31,000 | 13:00 | Tuesday | 18% |
| Tram stop panel | 29,500 | 08:00 | Thursday | 26% |
Invented figures for illustration; not real figures for Madrid.
All three earn a screen on footfall. But they sell differently. The plaza panel is an evening and weekend site, right for cinema, restaurants and retail. The office avenue is a weekday lunchtime site, right for food delivery and business services. The tram stop is a morning commuting site. On a digital screen the owner can sell each site's busiest hours at a premium and its quiet hours at a lower rate, and show buyers why with the day split.
Mistakes to avoid
- Selling people-hours as impressions. It overclaims and a careful buyer will catch it.
- A circle wider than the sight line. At 500 m you count people who cannot see the panel. Stay at 50 to 200 m.
- Measuring road speed at the wrong hour. A board lit at night is not helped by a slow morning. Run Traffic Flow at the hours it is seen.
- Counting cars where none are counted. Live traffic gives speeds, not volumes. Car counts by the hour exist only for roads in the United Arab Emirates, through the Road traffic history dataset in Regional data.
- One week's snapshot. Holidays, events and works can distort a short window. Use 30 days and check the dates covered.
- Sites in Australia. Footfall does not cover Australia yet.
A site report for the sales team, from an AI employee
- Start with Schedule, monthly, on a weekday at 18:00 so the road speeds describe the evening.
- Bring in the panels with My data: name, position and whether each faces the pavement or the road.
- Add Mobility Footfall: Footfall, Busy hours and Busiest days, 100 m, the last 30 days.
- Add Traffic Flow with Adjacent roads, for the speed and jam factor at that hour.
- Add Calculated field to give each panel a simple band (for example top, middle, lower third of your network by footfall_daily), then Sort and limit to put the strongest first.
- Finish with Make a report and send it to the sales team. In the inbox: a PDF with each panel, its footfall, busiest hour and day, day split, evening road speed, band, and a map.
A second flow scheduled at 08:00 gives the morning road picture. The two reports together give your sellers a page per site that a buyer can check.
Questions
Can footfall tell me how many people saw an advert?
No. It measures time spent in the area near the panel, not who looked at it. Use it to compare sites and hours.
Does Traffic Flow count the cars passing a billboard?
No. It gives live speeds and how jammed the roads are. Car counts by hour exist only for roads in the United Arab Emirates, in Regional data.
What circle should I use for a street panel?
Between 50 and 200 m, roughly the distance from which the panel can be read.
How do I price a digital screen by hour?
Use each site's busiest hour and day split to decide which hours are premium. The figures cover days ending about ten days ago, so refresh them monthly.