Every figure below links to the page it came from, with the date it was checked (October 6, 2026). Where a source is American, as Placer.ai is, or American and British, as Eventbrite's survey is, the entry says so. Quote the number with its source, not with ours.
In short
- 93% of Canadian retail trade happens outside e-commerce, and the platforms that sold local businesses on measurement cannot see most of it.
- Google Ads models store visits from a panel; Meta retired its store traffic objective.
- The share of iPhone users who let an app track them across other companies' apps sits at 35%, and Google has retired the technology that was meant to replace the cookie.
- Restaurants, the businesses that most need the count, are the ones with the thinnest margins.
Where the money is spent
1. Canadian retail sales were $73.7 billion in May 2026, up 1.0% on the month (Statistics Canada, released July 23, 2026). 2. Retail e-commerce sales were $5.0 billion that month, 6.8% of total retail trade, down from 7.0% in April (same release). 3. Core retail sales, which exclude gasoline and motor vehicle dealers, rose 0.9% in May (same release). 4. Food services and drinking places sold $8.8 billion in February 2026, up 0.6% on the month (Statistics Canada, released April 28, 2026). 5. Full-service restaurants led that month at +1.4%, with limited-service eating places at +1.0% (same release). 6. Prices for food purchased from restaurants were 7.8% higher in February 2026 than a year earlier (same release). 7. Full-service restaurant sales were up 7.7% year over year in January 2026 (Statistics Canada).
What foot traffic is doing
8. In the United States, brick-and-mortar retail visits rose 0.3% year over year in August 2026, easing from 1.7% growth in July (Placer.ai, September 15, 2026). 9. Dining visits fell 2.4% in the same month, and "visits fell in nearly every state" (same report). 10. Open-air shopping centres led with visits up 6.6%, indoor malls gained 5.0%, and outlet malls fell 2.7% (same report). 11. Placer.ai's figures come from "a panel of tens of millions of devices" and cover the United States only (same report).
What the platforms can and cannot measure
12. Google Ads store visits "use anonymous, aggregated statistics which are then extrapolated to represent the broader population" (Google Ads Help). 13. Google checks the model against a panel of over 10 million Google Opinion Rewards volunteers (same page). 14. Eligibility requires "enough ad clicks or impressions" and "enough foot traffic" to pass privacy thresholds, and locations related to religion, sexual interests, children and certain health issues are ineligible (same page). 15. Google is "unable to provide guidance that guarantees an account to be eligible for store visit reporting" (Google Ads Help). 16. Meta consolidated 11 ad objectives into six (Adweek); store traffic was not one of them. 17. Existing store traffic campaigns ran "until mid-2024, tentatively" (Meta Business Help). 18. "Store Pages are only available to managed Facebook clients" (Meta Business Help). 19. GroundTruth launched a cost-per-visit model in March 2018 in which advertisers "pay only for ads that result in a store visit", and was tracking over 2 billion visits a month at the time (GroundTruth).
The signal that went away
20. Apps that collect data to track people across other companies' apps and websites must request permission through Apple's App Tracking Transparency framework, available since iOS 14 (Apple Developer). 21. The industry-wide opt-in rate among users shown the prompt was 35% in Q2 2025, up from 34.5% in Q2 2024 and 34% in Q2 2023 (Adjust, July 15, 2025). 22. Canada's opt-in rate was 29% and Australia's 27%; Brazil led at 50% (same report). 23. AppsFlyer's own measure is 39% as a weighted average and 26% per app, from nearly 550 apps (AppsFlyer, updated November 27, 2025). 24. On April 22, 2025, Google said it would "maintain our current approach to offering users third-party cookie choice in Chrome" and would not roll out a new standalone prompt (Privacy Sandbox). 25. On October 17, 2025, Google retired the Attribution Reporting API, Topics, Protected Audience and other Privacy Sandbox technologies, citing "their low levels of adoption" (Privacy Sandbox).
Why operators want the visit counted
26. 44% of Canadian restaurants were operating at a loss or breaking even in Q4 2025, up from 41% in June 2025, and 60% reported worse profitability than expected (Restaurants Canada, February 12, 2026). 27. Real commercial foodservice sales are forecast to decline 1.1% in 2026 (same release). 28. Dalhousie's Agri-Food Analytics Lab expects 1,500 to 2,500 net restaurant closures in 2026, with 579 tracked in the first half; accommodation and food-service insolvencies reached 360 in the first half, up about 7.5% (Retail Insider, August 18, 2026). 29. 82% of 600 Canadian full-service operators surveyed in October 2025 remained optimistic, and online ordering raised sales by an average of 18% where added (TouchBistro). 30. 86% of Canadians planned to shop close to home for the 2025 holidays and 59% planned to browse in store for ideas (Retail Council of Canada, October 20, 2025). 31. December 23 reached 95% of Black Friday's transaction volume and Boxing Day took less than half (Moneris data via Retail Insider, January 15, 2026).
How people decide where to go
32. 88% of Canadian diners at least occasionally rely on a restaurant's popularity on social media before deciding to go, and 35% used Google Reviews in the past three months to choose (Harris Poll for TouchBistro). 33. 38% of Canadians got news from creators or influencers in the past week, rising to 57% of 18 to 24 year olds (Digital News Report Canada 2026). 34. 79% of Canadians who follow creators prefer personal or spontaneous content to brand partnership content (Leger, 2026 DGTL study). 35. 67% of Canadians trust an AI influencer's recommendation less than a human's (Caddle for Ad Standards, October 2025). 36. 69% of 18 to 35 year olds in the United States and the United Kingdom rely on personal networks and word of mouth to find events (Eventbrite Social Study, January 14, 2026).
How to read these numbers together
The retail and restaurant figures say where the money is: at the counter. The platform figures say the two largest ad sellers either estimate visits for accounts big enough to qualify or have stopped offering the objective. The permission figures say the cross-app identifier those estimates once leaned on is now opt-in, and most people shown the prompt decline it; how many phones also share their location with any one network, no benchmark says. The margin figures say the businesses that most need a count cannot afford to guess.
The plain-language guide explains the terms, and the comparison of counting methods sets out what a business can do on its own side of the door. On Onlure, local businesses book local creators for a campaign and see the walk-ins each creator sends; the World Soccer Party case study carries one such count.
Frequently asked questions
What share of retail sales in Canada happen in store?
Statistics Canada put retail e-commerce at 6.8% of retail trade in May 2026, so about 93% of retail sales were made through channels other than online stores, most of them at a physical location.
Can Google Ads measure store visits for a small business?
Google models store visits for accounts that use location assets, sit outside sensitive categories, and have enough ad clicks, impressions and foot traffic to pass its privacy thresholds. It says it cannot guarantee eligibility, and small single-location accounts often never see the metric.
Why did store visit measurement get harder after 2021?
Apple's App Tracking Transparency made the cross-app identifier that ad networks used to connect an ad view to a later visit opt-in, and about 35% of users say yes. Meta retired its store traffic objective, and in 2025 Google kept third-party cookies while retiring the Privacy Sandbox tools built to replace them, leaving businesses to count visits on their own side.
