Neighborhoods Targeting

Overview

Neighborhoods are geographic trade areas identified by GroundTruth’s Blueprints™ technology [Blueprints 101]. They represent the specific areas with the highest concentration of real-world foot traffic affinity to a brand or store location.

• Traditional geofencing answers: “Who is near my store right now?”
• Neighborhoods answer: “Where do people who visit my store actually live and spend time?”

By identifying where a brand’s customers live (dwell) and spend their time, you can reach potential customers in geographic zones (trade areas) that mirror your current customer base.

Key Characteristics

• Verified Data: Based on real-world, location-verified foot traffic data
• Store-Specific: Unique to each individual store location
• Beyond Proximity: Represents customer dwell areas rather just distance from store, extending beyond traditional radius targeting
• Privacy-Safe: A contextual, geography-based solution (not demographic-based)

How It Works

Neighborhoods are built using observed real-world foot traffic patterns tied to specific Blueprinted locations. For every location, GroundTruth’s system analyzes:

• Where visitors originate from before visiting the store
• Where they travel to after visiting the store
• The concentration of repeat visitation from surrounding areas

The result is a store-specific heat map that identifies geographic “trade areas” with the highest representation of visitors to that store’s location.

When to Use Neighborhoods

Neighborhoods is a contextual, geography-based solution designed to scale awareness without relying on third-party data. It works best when the goal is scale and awareness, rather than immediate visitation.

The Strategic Question: “If I have a store in a particular area, what surrounding areas are most likely to influence people to visit my location—and are already interested in what I’m selling?”

Ideal Use Cases

• Brand awareness campaigns
• Competitor conquesting
• Statewide or nationwide campaigns where scale is required
• Identifying areas that are most likely to influence store visitation

When to Choose Other Tactics

• Driving direct, immediate store visits
• Small, highly localized campaigns
• Campaigns where strict proximity is required

Neighborhoods Targeting vs Other Targeting Types

Neighborhoods are effectively a geographic lookalike audience, powered by offline behavior.

Guardrails & Requirements

To ensure campaign success, keep the following in mind:

• Availability: If a brand or Location Group is new to our system, we recommend waiting 1 month to generate enough data to build a Neighborhood map. For new Location Groups, refer to [Location Group Targeting Enhancements]
• Pacing: Once built, Neighborhoods are updated weekly. The system starts by targeting high-density “heat map” areas. If a campaign needs more volume to spend its budget, the system will dynamically expand to slightly lower-density areas to maintain pacing.
• Direct Mail Not Supported: Neighborhoods cannot be combined with Direct Mail media, as those campaigns are already tied to specific, fixed addresses.