Offline attribution is the work of connecting a marketing touch, such as an ad, a post or a creator's video, to something that happened in the physical world: a visit, a booking, a purchase at the counter. Online, a click carries its own receipt. Offline, nothing does, so the business has to build the link itself.
In short
- Retail e-commerce was 6.8% of Canadian retail trade in May 2026, per Statistics Canada. The other 93 cents of every retail dollar changed hands somewhere a web analytics tool cannot see.
- Google Ads models store visits from signed-in users who opted into location history, reports them as anonymous, aggregated estimates, and only for accounts with enough ad volume and foot traffic to pass its privacy thresholds.
- Meta retired the store traffic objective; what remains is store location features inside the awareness and sales objectives, and store pages for managed clients only.
- There are seven ways a business can count a visit on its own. Each counts a different thing, and only some let you pay per visit.
Why is offline attribution hard?
A website knows which link brought a visitor because the browser says so. A café does not know which post brought the person at the counter, because nothing travels with them from the feed to the door. Everything built to close that gap relies on something the customer carries (a phone, a card, a code) or something the customer says ("I saw it on Instagram").
Phone-based methods have become harder since 2021. Apps that want to link a person's data across other companies' apps and websites must ask permission under Apple's App Tracking Transparency framework, and Adjust's benchmark puts the share who say yes at 35% in the second quarter of 2025, with Canada at 29%. That permission is the identifier an ad network used to tie an ad view in one app to a visit observed later. Location sharing is a separate permission granted app by app, and Google's store visit count draws on signed-in users who opted into Location History, a pool whose size Google does not publish. The timeline of lost signal covers what changed and when.
How do Google and Meta count a store visit?
Google Ads reports a conversion called store visits. Its help page says the count comes from people who are signed in to a Google account and have opted into location history, that it "uses anonymous, aggregated statistics which are then extrapolated to represent the broader population", and that the model is checked against surveys of a panel of over 10 million Google Opinion Rewards volunteers. The result is a modelled estimate of the population, not a list of customers.
Eligibility is the catch for a small business. The account needs location assets, the stores must not be in a sensitive category, and "your ads must have enough ad clicks or impressions, and your business must have enough foot traffic, to pass our privacy thresholds". Google's own reporting FAQ adds that it is "unable to provide guidance that guarantees an account to be eligible". The full explainer goes through each rule.
Meta simplified its 11 campaign objectives to six, as Adweek reported, and store traffic was not among them. Meta's help page says existing store traffic campaigns would run "until mid-2024, tentatively", and that businesses should now use the awareness or sales objective with store location features, a page that also notes "Store Pages are only available to managed Facebook clients". The Meta explainer covers what a local business can still measure there.
What are the seven ways to count a visit?
1. A code at the counter. The customer shows or says a code from the post. Counts redemptions. 2. A question at the counter. "How did you hear about us?" Counts answers, with all the memory problems answers have. 3. A platform estimate. Google's modelled store visits. Counts a population, not a person. 4. Geofenced ads with observed visits. Ad networks that charge for a visit they observed; GroundTruth launched a model in 2018 in which advertisers pay only for ads that result in a store visit. 5. Card linking. The customer enrols a card and purchases at participating locations are reported. Fidel's FAQ describes the consent checkbox the cardholder must tick, and the cards that are not eligible. 6. A link to a page. Counts clicks and online orders. A click is not a visit. 7. Loyalty check-ins. Counts identified customers who already enrolled.
The comparison sets them against each other on what they count, what they cost and whether you can pay per visit.
What should "verified" mean?
Three things. The visit was counted at the place, not inferred from an ad view. It was counted inside a window after the touch, so a customer who came in three weeks later does not get credited to a post they forgot. And it names the source, the specific ad, creator or flyer, so the next budget can follow the count. A number that fails any of the three is a signal, not a receipt, and a channel that cannot produce the receipt cannot be paid per visit. The cost per visit explainer turns the receipt into a price.
What to do this quarter
Pick one counting method per channel and ask each channel for its count. Compare them on cost per visit rather than reach. Keep the method the customer finds easiest, because the method that gets used is the one that counts.
On Onlure, local businesses book local creators for a campaign and see the walk-ins each creator sends; two Toronto campaigns, World Soccer Party and Simi African Foods, show what that count looks like. The brands page explains how a campaign is set up.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between online and offline attribution?
Online attribution follows a click through to a page, a form or a checkout, and the browser carries the evidence. Offline attribution connects a marketing touch to a visit, booking or purchase at a physical location, where nothing carries the evidence unless the business sets up a code, a link, a card link or a counted visit.
Can a small business use Google's store visit conversions?
Only if its account passes Google's privacy thresholds for ad clicks, impressions and foot traffic, uses location assets, and sits outside the sensitive categories. Google says it cannot guarantee eligibility, and single-location businesses with modest ad spend usually never see the number.
What is a verified store visit?
A visit counted at the location, within a set window after the marketing touch, and tied to a named source such as a specific creator or ad. Modelled estimates and survey answers are useful signals but do not meet that bar.
