Signal-Driven Brand Collaborations

Early-holiday footfall: local media as a sales channel

You need to lift store visits and buyer share in the Nov 28–Dec 12 window without blanket discounts
Window
2025-11-28 → 2025-12-12
Read time
~22 min read
Confidence
Directional
Region
US
Updated Dec 12, 2025
Head of Retail assigning Nov2812 radio sponsorships and QR tests
Public and community outlets are getting new funding and inventory for partnerships.
Window 2025-11-28 → 2025-12-12 Read ~22 min read Confidence Directional

Early-holiday footfall: local media as a sales channel

You need to lift store visits and buyer share in the Nov 28–Dec 12 window without blanket discounts

Short test: use local public-media sponsorships plus hyper-local CTV and in-store QR events to target 10-15% incremental visits and protect CPA; ask to lock station-level tracking within 30 days.

Several local public stations now offer fast-turn sponsorships and station-level promo codes or QR pages, which we can use to link exposure to visits. Programmatic local CTV gives repeatable household reach inside 25-mile store clusters. At the same time the math on running blanket discounts for the early holiday window looks poor: margin leakage with little measured lift in buyer share. That creates a narrow, measurable opening to test a media-led local approach instead of deeper promos.

If you are running stores, run the pilot: a two-week, six-store test in geo clusters from Nov 28 to Dec 12 pairing short public-radio sponsorships, local CTV, and QR-enabled in-store events. Use station-specific promo codes or QR landing pages to tie impressions to measured visits and run matched control areas to attribute lift. I recommend the store-as-studio / media-led holiday approach because it trades visible, attributable media for discounting while keeping spend and CPA guarded. Keep daily pacing and a single measurement spine so we see lift and attribution quickly.

Hitting a 10-15% foot-traffic lift in the early window would feel like an extra busy Saturday across the six stores — more buyers, fuller registers, and clearer product trial without margin-killing coupons. Stretching to ≥25% would change staffing and stock priorities for the season and justify scaling media buys. Raising early-window buyer share from ~12-15% to 20-30% concentrates incremental sales into higher-margin days rather than across the whole holiday run.

The first failure mode is attribution breakage: if station codes or QR pages are misconfigured we see impressions but no tied visits. Second, geo bleed or panel noise on local CTV can dilute treatment vs control differences and create false negatives. Third, short-flight CPM spikes could push CPA above the ceiling; watch spend pacing and stop if CPA approaches <=0.8× baseline or QR scans fall under ≥5% of footfall.

This is a bet that short, local media plus in-store events moves visits and buyer share faster than blanket discounts and gives us a clean attribution test. I need Partnerships to lock station-level promos and CTV buys with tracking, Retail to run QR-enabled events and staff the stores, Marketing to execute creative and daily measurement, and Finance to set the spend bands against the CPA guardrail. Approve the two-week Local Operators Media Pilot (Nov 28–Dec 12) across six geo-cluster stores, fund the station-level buys, and hold to the CPA and QR guardrails.

What matters in this window is Local public-media inventory is available now with low negotiation friction; short flights reduce exposure risk and give station-level tracking we can tie to visits., Hyper-local CTV and station codes let us buy measurable frequency inside a store radius so we trade promotional depth for visible, attributable reach during a high-decision window., and The early holiday window concentrates buyers; proving incremental share here means smaller, profitable promotions later and preserves margin.

The numbers I would watch: Foot traffic uplift: 10-15% incremental visits measured treatment vs control during the Nov 28–Dec 12 two-week window.; Early-window buyer share: move from ~12–15% to 20-30% of buyers within the Nov 28–Dec 12 window.; Guardrails: event CPA at or below <=0.8× baseline and QR redemption at or above ≥5% of measured footfall during the Nov 28–Dec 12 flight.

If that resonates, Approve the two-week Local Operators Media Pilot (Nov 28–Dec 12) across six geo-cluster stores, fund the station-level buys, and hold to the CPA and QR guardrails.

Forward with subject: Approve: Nov 28–Dec 12 local-media + CTV pilot to lift early-window visits

Visual Notes

CMO mapping measurement spine with footfall lift and early-window share by station
Signal Map
Signal spine: local public media inventory + programmatic local CTV create two different routes to lift early-window footfall without deep discounts. High-value windows: Nov 28–Dec 12 is the early holiday testing window — prioritize short, high-visibility activations and measured media pilots that run inside this window. What changes discounting math: replace open-ended national percentage-off promotions with limited-time experiential or co-branded offers tied to local media activations and cap promo intensity; test event CPA ≤0.8× baseline and track buyer activity share versus promo intensity side by side. Competing approaches: national mass discounting and influencer-heavy approaches will drive broad demand but dilute margin and buyer-quality; prefer measured local media buys or station partnerships in 5 target DMAs and compare lift to a matched-control set of stores.
Head of Partnerships handing unique QR promos to test radio sponsorship redemptions
Case Study 1
Short public radio sponsorships to drive store footfall. Local public media shows expanded sponsorship inventory and lower negotiation friction; ask for dedicated promo codes or QR per station to tie visits to creative.