Use Case: Building High-Performance Seed Audiences for QSR Campaigns Using Mobility Data
As competition in the Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) sector intensifies, marketers are under increasing pressure to find new customers while maximising media efficiency.
Traditional demographic targeting can identify broad audience groups, but it often fails to capture actual dining behaviour and purchase intent. Mobility data offers a powerful alternative, enabling brands to build seed audiences based on real-world visitation patterns and consumer habits.
The Challenge
A national chicken restaurant chain wanted to expand its customer base and improve the effectiveness of its digital advertising campaigns.
While existing customer data provided some insight into current patrons, the brand needed a scalable way to identify consumers who were highly likely to purchase chicken-based meals but were not yet regular customers.
The Solution
Using anonymised mobility intelligence, analysts created a behavioural seed audience based on verified visits to:
- Chicken-focused QSR competitors
- Fried chicken and takeaway restaurants
- High-frequency fast-food diners
- Food courts and dining precincts with strong chicken category representation
Additional signals were layered into the audience model, including:
- Visit frequency
- Recency of visits
- Time-of-day dining patterns
- Trade area affinity
- Cross-shopping behaviour between competing brands
This created a highly qualified seed audience of consumers demonstrating a strong propensity to purchase chicken meals.
Audience Expansion
The seed audience was then activated within ad-tech platforms to create lookalike and propensity-based audiences.
Machine learning models identified additional consumers whose mobility patterns closely matched the behavioural characteristics of known chicken QSR visitors, significantly expanding campaign reach while maintaining relevance.
Campaign Activation
The audience was deployed across:
- Programmatic display
- Connected TV
- Mobile advertising
- Social media platforms
- Digital out-of-home activation
Creative messaging was tailored to local store locations, dining occasions, and promotional offers.
Results
Compared to demographic-only targeting approaches, the mobility-derived audience delivered:
- Higher engagement rates
- Improved click-through performance
- Increased store visitation
- Lower customer acquisition costs
- Stronger return on advertising spend
Why Mobility Data Works
People’s movements reveal intent.
By understanding where consumers actually spend their time and which restaurants they visit, marketers can move beyond assumptions and target audiences based on demonstrated behaviour.
For QSR brands, mobility-derived seed audiences provide a scalable foundation for customer acquisition, helping advertisers reach consumers who are already showing strong category affinity and purchase potential.
The result is smarter targeting, more efficient media spend, and increased footfall at the point of sale.