Drako's Gambit: Will Free Foot Traffic Data End Ad Tech's 'Tax'?

MONTREAL – September 10, 2026 – In a move that sends a clear signal to the advertising technology sector, programmatic partner Drako announced today it will no longer charge for foot traffic attribution (FTA), a service that has become a standard, and costly, component of digital campaigns for physical businesses. By offering this service for free, the company is directly challenging what many in the industry begrudgingly call the "measurement tax"—the layered fees for analytics that often inflate the cost of media without a proportional increase in value.

For years, retailers, restaurants, and auto dealerships have relied on FTA to connect digital ad exposure to in-store visits. This data, which links anonymized device IDs to physical locations, provides a crucial, if imperfect, signal for campaign performance. Yet, this signal has consistently come at a premium, with providers frequently charging around $0.50 CPM (cost per thousand impressions) to append visit data to a campaign. Drako’s decision to eliminate this fee for clients using its audience data or managed services could force a market-wide reckoning on the price of basic performance metrics.

The Crumbling Wall of the Measurement Tax

The practice of charging extra for measurement has long been a quiet frustration for advertisers. While online conversion tracking is typically considered a fundamental utility included with media buys, tracking offline actions has been treated as a premium add-on. This has created a tiered system where only those with sufficient budget could access data on how their digital efforts influenced real-world behavior.

"We've always budgeted for attribution as a necessary evil, a line item that inflates media costs," one senior agency media buyer commented on condition of anonymity. "You pay the toll because not having the data feels irresponsible, but you're never entirely sure the insight justifies the cost."

Competitors like Foursquare and GroundTruth have built significant business models around location intelligence, offering sophisticated attribution platforms. Foursquare’s related audience and proximity services are priced on a CPM basis, while GroundTruth pioneered a "Cost Per Visit" (CPV) model, billing brands directly for verified store visits. These paid models are now under direct pressure. Drako’s move commoditizes the basic layer of FTA, suggesting that its value lies not as a standalone product, but as an integrated feature that enhances the core media offering.

"Advertisers should not have to pay a second toll for a partial signal about the media they already bought,” said Stewart Sullivan, CEO and Co-Founder of Drako, in the company's announcement. By framing the fee as a "toll" on a "partial signal," Sullivan is not only justifying his company's strategy but also tapping into a deep-seated sentiment among marketers who feel squeezed by the complex and often opaque ad tech supply chain.

A New Playbook for Campaign Optimization

Drako's announcement is more than just a pricing strategy; it's a strategic repositioning of what foot traffic attribution is actually for. The company is explicitly stating that FTA's greatest strength is not as a post-campaign report card but as an in-flight optimization tool. The goal is to give media traders a real-time feedback loop to improve performance while a campaign is still active.

For a brand manager or media planner, this is a significant practical shift. Imagine running a campaign to drive traffic to a new retail location. With free, integrated FTA, the trading team can see within days that ads placed on a weather app are driving more visits than those on a social media platform. They can then immediately shift budget toward the better-performing tactic, maximizing the campaign's effectiveness without waiting weeks for a final report or worrying about racking up measurement fees.

This approach democratizes a capability that was previously the domain of larger, more data-savvy advertisers. By making implementation straightforward—either through a standard conversion pixel within an agency’s existing DSP or via direct platform integrations—Drako is lowering the technical barrier to entry. The offering is bundled for clients that activate Drako's custom or syndicated audiences, effectively making it a value-add that strengthens its core data business.

Redefining Value: Attribution vs. Incrementality

Perhaps the most strategically significant aspect of Drako’s move is the clear line it draws in the sand between attribution and incrementality. The company argues that FTA, in its common form, answers a simple question: of the people who saw an ad, how many later visited a store? It's a correlation, a directional signal. It does not, however, answer the far more critical business question: how many of those visits happened because of the ad?

This latter question is the domain of incrementality measurement, which seeks to establish causality. To answer it, one needs a different methodology, typically involving control groups (a similar audience that was not shown the ad) to isolate the campaign's true lift. For this, Drako continues to offer premium, paid services like geolift studies and market share analysis.

In doing so, the company is educating the market and promoting a more nuanced understanding of measurement. As Sullivan noted, "Premium measurement fees should be reserved for insight that creates incremental value." This philosophy challenges the industry's over-reliance on a single attribution number as a proxy for total campaign success. It encourages advertisers to match the measurement tool to the business question: use free FTA for tactical optimization, but invest in robust lift studies to answer strategic questions about budget allocation and true return on investment.

This distinction is critical. The accuracy of any foot traffic data is inherently limited by factors like the provider’s device panel size, the precision of geofences drawn around stores, and the chosen attribution window. By acknowledging FTA is a "partial signal" upfront and giving it away, Drako sidesteps debates about its perfection and instead focuses on its practical utility. This move could push the entire industry toward greater transparency, forcing competitors to not only justify their prices but also be more explicit about what their tools can and cannot prove.