Measuring QSR Traffic

The Problem

Most restaurant brands run digital ads. Most of them can't tell you if those ads actually brought anyone through the door.

That's not a knock. It's where the industry has been for a long time: impression counts, click-through rates, estimated reach. Those metrics describe what happened on a screen, not what happened in the real world.

When a regional restaurant chain came to us, this was their exact situation. They were spending on ads and traffic looked fine, but they couldn't connect an impression to a visit, couldn't justify the channel to leadership, and had no way to know which part of the campaign was working.

They'd tried QR codes, discount offers, and organic social posts. None of it gave them a clear line between an ad and a person walking through the door.

What We Did

We ran a campaign on Proximity, Klever's Movement Intelligence engine, with one job: tie digital ad exposure to real, verified in-store visits.

Proximity found and reached audiences using verified real-world movement data, meaning people who actually visit similar locations. Display and mobile ads ran across channels and were optimized throughout the flight. Every impression was matched against actual store visits, measured through Proximity.

Not estimated. Not modeled. Actual visits.

What Happened

In the first two weeks, the campaign drove 500 tracked store visits. By the end of month one, that number was over 2,600. Cost per verified visit: $4.69.

A verified visit means someone saw the ad and walked into the restaurant. Not someone who clicked. Not someone who "engaged." Someone who showed up.

For a brand that had been relying on QR codes and gut feeling, $4.69 per verified visit was a good number. It was also the first one they could actually take to leadership.

When you can prove the channel works, you're not defending your budget in the next meeting. You're asking for more of it. The conversation changes.

Why It Matters

The gap between digital advertising and real-world results has always existed. What's changed is how well we can close it.

Movement Intelligence starts from real device movement before, during, and after a campaign, then matches ad exposure to outcome. Proximity doesn't estimate whether an ad drove a visit. It shows you.

For industries where physical presence is the whole point, like restaurants, retail, healthcare, and entertainment, that makes the channel easier to defend and easier to scale.

The question was never "are our ads running?" It was "are our ads working?" Those are different questions, and now there's an answer to the second one.

Up Next

This is the first in a series of real results from campaigns across industries. No client names, but the numbers are real, and so are the problems they solved.

Next: a lottery brand that needed to move product in a specific region, and the targeting approach behind a 28% sales lift.

If you're spending on ads without knowing what they drive, that's the conversation we should be having.