3.1:1 ROAS from a 30-day campaign across 5 mall and outlet stores. 4,593 walk-throughs matched to the campaign.
The challenge
These Cinnabon locations sit inside malls and outlet centers, with thousands of shoppers walking past each day. That creates a measurement problem traditional tools can't solve:
The first gap was geofencing can't separate signal from noise. It can show that an ad-exposed phone entered the mall. It can't show whether Cinnabon's ad, another tenant's ad or plain foot traffic brought that person to the counter.
A second challenge was growth needed a sharper audience. Cinnabon wanted to reach new customers and grow sales through paid media, without paying to reach every shopper in the metro area.
The solution
Build the audience: mall shoppers who already crave dessert. Through a mall-operator retail media program, Cinnabon started from the operator's first-party shopper audience: people verified as visiting those centers. Adentro paired it with Affinity Network audiences of people observed visiting baked goods, dessert and breakfast pastry spots. Both were then extended to people with matching visit habits, with interest targeting layered on for desserts, pastry, outlet shopping, Cinnabon and food.
Deliver the campaign: a 30-day campaign test. Cinnabon ran a limited-time product promotion for 30 days across the metro areas around 5 stores. Creative ran in three formats: one static image, one carousel and one video.
Read the outcome: at Cinnabon rather than at the mall entrance. Cinnabon's own guest WiFi produced a device-verified visit at the store itself, not at the mall doors. Walk-Through Rate™ matched people exposed to the ads against guests who later connected at a Cinnabon. That isolated Cinnabon visits from general mall traffic, the exact gap geofencing leaves open. It also showed which pieces worked: the mall shopper and Affinity Network audiences accounted for 52% of matched walk-throughs, and the static creative recorded the most.
Why the combination mattered
The mall operator's first-party shopper data anchored the campaign to existing mall visitors. Affinity Network expanded beyond that seed using observed category visits, the promotion created a reason to act, and Guest WiFi plus Walk-Through Rate™ measured Cinnabon-level arrivals. Property-level traffic and store-level visits must remain separate outcomes.
The results
- 3.1:1 ROAS over a 30-day campaign
- 4,593 walk-throughs matched to the campaign
- 4.1M impressions
- 52% of walk-throughs came from the mall shopper and Affinity Network audiences