MobileScapes

Canada's most comprehensive mobile movement database

MobileScapes is now powered by cellular network data and modelled by an expert team of spatial data scientists. The data are de-identified, normalized, aggregated and/or anonymized to deliver the most accurate and representative movement profiles of the Canadian population.

In ENVISION, users can explore visiting over 130,000 ready-to-use geofences in the EA Geofence Library. A geofence is a virtual boundary around a real-world location such as a retail store, restaurant or bank. MobileScapes data are updated weekly, providing current information on locations Canadians frequent, how often they visit and how long they stay.

Our data come from de-identified cellular network signals. These signals are processed through advanced models that calibrate the observed data to represent the Canadian population. The result is foot traffic estimates grounded in real-world behaviour based on a large, consistent sample of device activity.

What’s New?

The 2026 vintage of MobileScapes is built on a redesigned data engine, integrated into the new ENVISION platform, and delivers a map-centric experience for mobile movement analysis.

A Stronger Data Foundation

MobileScapes uses cellular network data as the primary source for estimating visit volumes. These data cover a large share of the Canadian population and provide more consistent representation nationwide. A larger and more stable sample reduces day to day volatility and increases confidence in the results.

Cellular network data also deliver more consistent signals throughout the day for most devices, allowing for a more complete view of how people move throughout the day.

The model also uses other sources in estimating the patterns, including shopping behaviour from EA databases (e.g. HouseholdSpend), historical aggregated location trends and contextual information like dwell time, hours of operation, seasonality and traffic patterns.

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Map-Centric Experience in ENVISION

MobileScapes is fully integrated into the new ENVISION platform, offering an interactive map experience. Pre calculated visit data allow users to quickly explore and analyze visit patterns directly on the map with improved performance.

MobileScapes in ENVISION, Map View.

Key Features

Interactive Map Visualizations: Explore visit patterns using size scaled markers by visit volume, hex grid heatmaps that reveal foot traffic density and shaded origin maps showing where visitors come from at the Forward Sortation Area (FSA) level.
Pre Aggregated Data: All data are summarized and ready to explore, with results loading in seconds.
Flexible Filtering: Filter results by location, banner, category, geography, date range, day of week or time of day. (Morning: 6 AM–12 PM, Afternoon: 12 PM–6 PM, Evening: 6 PM–12 AM).
Visit Duration Insights: Analyze visits across three duration bands—under 30 minutes, 30 to 60 minutes and over 60 minutes.
PRIZM^® Target Group Filtering: Segment visit data by the 67 PRIZM^® segments to understand which audiences frequent a location.
Visitor Extract Download: Access aggregated visitor origin data at a small area geography (such as neighbourhoods or postal codes) that can be linked to other EA data. This enables deeper analysis by enriching visitor origins with demographic, lifestyle and values based attributes to better understand who visits a location and inform customer profiling, targeting and planning decisions.

Data Coverage

Data are available from January 2023 onward.

EA maintains data for the current year and the three prior years. During our annual vintage update, the oldest year is retired.

Data are updated and released weekly.

Geofence Selection in ENVISION.

Geofences and Accessing the Data

In ENVISION, the MobileScapes tool provides access to the full EA Geofence

Library, searchable by location, banner, category or geography.

The EA Geofence Library covers Canadian stores, restaurants, shopping centres, parks, entertainment venues and more.

For a complete list of categories, please refer to the latest MobileScapes EA Geofences Library – Category List.

Ready to really understand your customers?

Connect your data to mobile movement data

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Privacy and Security with Mobile Movement Data

Environics Analytics is proud to be among the first Canadian organizations certified to the ISO/IEC 31700 Privacy by Design standard. Privacy-by-design is embedded throughout the development and delivery of our MobileScapes product, which uses de-identified, aggregated and/or anonymized mobile data to provide population level insights on the movement patterns of Canadians.

We work exclusively with trusted data sources (both cellular network signals and GPS locations) who meet our strict privacy, security and ethical standards. This is supported by rigorous assessments to ensure lawful collection, use and disclosure, transparency and compliance with applicable privacy laws and best practices. Our technology and processing environment are further supported by independent, third-party security certifications ensuring strong protections for data at every stage.

For more information, or to see how MobileScapes can help your analysis, please contact an EA sales representative or email our Support team.

How Is It Used?

Media and Outcomes

Creating targeted ad campaigns and measure the results

A mall owner and their agency are trying to plan an ad campaign that will increase traffic to a midtown mall:

Use MobileScapes to identify where current audiences are coming from. Create out of home and geo-targeted digital campaigns in those places to drive increased visits
Target new customers by using the PRIZM segments of current visitors
Build an OOH and a digital campaign to target the lookalikes in FSAs with reasonable proximity to the mall
Measure change in mall traffic during and after the campaign to assess performance

Key questions:

How can I create a campaign to bring more young families to my stores?

How can I reach my PRIZM target groups using out of home advertising?

Retail and Shopping Centres

A national retail chain wants to find out where to open new store locations.

Analyze visitation patterns and peak times at potential store locations
Compare traffic volume estimates at competitor locations within the same banner or category
Identify trade areas based on visit origins at the FSA level

Key questions:

Who are our shoppers and visitors and what are their interests?

How does my location’s visitation and trade area compare to competitors?

Banking and Financial Services

A bank is evaluating which branches to consolidate or renovate based on visitor patterns.

Analyze visit estimates to different branches by day of week and time of day
Identify areas with low foot traffic to optimize branch locations
Filter by PRIZM target groups to understand which visitor segments frequent each location

Key questions:

How does traffic trend month over month and year over year at my branches?

Which visitor segments should we target in our next marketing campaign?

Mobile Analytics FAQs

What are mobile analytics?

Mobile analytics help businesses and organizations enhance what they know about consumer and citizen movement patterns using privacy-compliant and permission-based mobile movement data collected from location-enabled apps. These data are then combined with cellular network data for improved accuracy in trending analysis by bringing in twenty times the observations.

What are mobile movement data?

Mobile movement data are anonymized and permission-based data collected from location-enabled apps on mobile devices. The main sources of data are opt-in location-enabled applications on mobile devices and ad exchange platforms. These data are then combined with twenty times the observations from cellular network data for improved accuracy in trending analysis. At its most basic level, raw mobile movement data provides a unique and persistent, yet anonymous, device id, along with a date, time and latitude/longitude coordinates for each observation. We then take steps to ensure privacy, such as summarizing the data to periods of time. All observed latitude and longitude coordinates are moved to the nearest 6-digit postal code to ensure anonymity.

Researchers can then observe devices within a defined area such as a store, public square or roadway for a given date and time range. Common evening location (CEL) and common daytime location (CDL) are inferred according to where these devices are most frequently observed during the day and at night. When analyzed correctly, mobile movement data can help you understand who’s visiting your locations, where your customers are coming from, how often they return and where else they might be going.

What can I do with mobile movement data?

Build Enhanced Customer Profiles: Easily link mobile movement data back to smaller area data and PRIZM segments to get a clearer picture of your target market.

Analyze Consumer Traffic: Identify the changing patterns in consumer visits to your location week-over-week and versus the same period last year.

Gain Competitive Insights: Understand the visitor profile for nearby competitors and how their trade areas interact with your own.

Improve Retail Site Selection: Pinpoint where your most frequent visitors are coming from to identify expansion opportunities and focus your local marketing efforts.

Validate Sponsorship Opportunities: Determine if your sponsorship initiatives are aligned with your target market.

Measure Brand Visibility: Profile consumers who have visited your locations or been exposed to your outdoor advertising.

How regularly are mobile movement data updated?

The data are updated weekly and posted 10 days after. Data pulls can date back to 2022.

Can I connect mobile movement data to other databases?

Yes. You can easily connect mobile movement data to EA’s traditional databases or your existing market and customer analysis for a more granular understanding of Canadian movement patterns, behaviours and preferences.

ENVISION users can link mobile movement data to EA’s 30,000 data points including demographic, lifestyle, social values and spending information from the PRIZM segmentation system to develop detailed profiles of consumers in any trade area or location whether you have customer data or not.

Which data providers are used?

Mobilescapes uses a combination of cellular network data and 4 combined sources of permission-based, de-identified mobile movement data from apps. Cellular network data is blended with app data for trend analysis. These mobile data are sourced from trusted suppliers who meet data quality and privacy compliance standards.

Is the MobileScapes database privacy compliant?

Yes. Our mobile movement data are collected only if the individual provides consent or permission. Consumers can easily change their level of location sharing overall or for individual mobile apps via their privacy settings on their mobile devices. Depending on the individual app settings, device holders can decide if a particular app should share their location while in use or block that permission outright. We actively participate in industry and association conversations in these areas, creating policies that protect individuals and allow for the responsible use of data.

To learn more about our privacy efforts, read our privacy policy.