Retailers weighing where to spend holiday ad dollars just got fresh evidence that radio pulls shoppers through the door. A new foot traffic study finds that the heavier a brand’s radio campaign runs, the bigger the resulting jump in store visits.
The findings come from a Placer.ai February 2026 Foot Traffic Study, analyzed by the Cumulus Media/Westwood One Audio Active Group, measuring a major retailer’s AM/FM push timed to Valentine’s Day. The campaign produced two surges in store visits, on February 11-12 and February 14, with incremental foot traffic lift peaking above 34% nationally.
Traffic gains tracked closely with each market’s gross rating point weight. Markets running very light or light schedules, in the 1-14 GRP range, saw lifts of up to 10%, while medium and heavy markets, running as many as 146 GRPs, produced increases of 10% to 30%.
Cumulus Media Chief Insights Officer Pierre Bouvard points to reach as the underlying driver. AM/FM reaches 86% of adults age 25 to 54 weekly, ahead of podcasts, television, and every major social platform, per Nielsen Comparable Metrics data. In August, Radio Ink reported on the same data set showing that layering radio onto a TikTok, Facebook, or Instagram campaign can lift incremental reach by as much as 112% for that demographic.
Older attribution data reinforces the pattern. A PlaceIQ analysis of a home improvement retailer’s 44-market, heavy-up AM/FM campaign, which ran in March 2019, found the brand’s share of category foot traffic climbed from 33.1% in January of that year to a peak of 35.6% in April, and remained above its pre-campaign baseline as late as July.
Marketing effectiveness firm Haus found that roughly a quarter of a campaign’s incremental lift arrives after the media spend window closes. For brands selling through retail channels specifically, Haus found that share, the median lift landing in the post-treatment window, rises to 29%, and that a quarter of brands in that category see their return on investment double once the delayed impact is factored in.
Motionworks reached a similar conclusion analyzing a national tax preparation firm’s AM/FM campaign. The strongest foot traffic gains showed up in the local markets carrying the heaviest GRP weight. The firm also found that medium and heavy radio weight lifted visits from the highest-income households, those earning $100,000 or more annually, well above what light-weight markets produced.
