Sample Pathcast Paths output — synthetic.
PATHCAST
Pathcast
Pathcast is Motionworks' movement intelligence family. Where Placecast measures what happens at a place, Pathcast measures what happens along the paths that lead to and past it — specifically the hourly volume of vehicles and pedestrians on linear segments within media viewsheds.
The Pathcast™ Path Library is the reference table for all movement paths used in Pathcast measurements. Paths are custom-defined linear segments — not generic HERE or OSM road links — that correspond to specific viewing angles and approach routes for out-of-home media displays. Each path carries a measurement gate, a directional context, an audit status (customer-provided through professionally audited), and a travel-mode flag (vehicle, pedestrian, or both). The Path Library provides the geometry and audit provenance behind every traffic volume estimate.
The Pathcast™ Viewshed Library documents the geographic boundaries — viewsheds, also called display exposure zones — within which path measurements are generated. Each viewshed is calculated from the physical characteristics of a specific media face: its size, elevation, orientation, place type, and area type (urbanicity). Paths exist only within a viewshed; the viewshed is the spatial contract for what traffic can have an opportunity to see a given display.
Pathcast™ by Date delivers the time-series layer: hourly vehicle and pedestrian traffic volumes on each path segment for each month back to January 2019, by day type. Data are finalized 30 days after month close. Vehicle metrics are the primary reliability tier; pedestrian fields are available as a research preview through April 2022, with methodology refinement ongoing.
- Hourly Temporal resolution
- Paths + Viewsheds Coverage
- Path-level + Face-level Units of analysis
Products
Download a sample
Synthetic sample outputs to evaluate shape and structure. Each pair includes a tear sheet PDF and a data file.
Sample Pathcast Faces output — synthetic.
Who uses Pathcast
- OOH operators and media networks use the Path Library and Viewshed Library to maintain an audited reference of the traffic-measurement geometry for their inventory.
- Media measurement teams use Pathcast by Date to compute monthly average daily traffic (MADT) for each face, feeding Circulation and OTS calculations in Viewcast.
- Campaign planners use Pathcast traffic volumes to compare inventory options by raw traffic volume before applying audience indexing from Popcast.
- Infrastructure researchers and planners use Pathcast by Date to study temporal traffic patterns — peak hours, day-type variation, seasonal trends — on specific road segments.
Data dimensions at a glance
| Dimension | Coverage |
|---|---|
| Geographic coverage | United States; Face Places and associated viewsheds |
| Geographic resolution | Path segment (linear); Viewshed polygon (display-level) |
| Temporal coverage | January 2019 to present |
| Update cadence | Monthly (new paths onboarded weekly) |
| Latency | Finalized 30 days after month close |
| Delivery | Snowflake secure view |
Methodology summary
Pathcast traffic estimates are derived from the Motionworks Population Intelligence Platform and validated against a nationwide network of permanent traffic counters. An independent validation study across 120,287 monthly comparisons from 7,466 continuous traffic count locations (2023–2024) found an R-squared of 0.982 and a Mean Absolute Percent Error of 9.1% — indicating Pathcast estimates explain 98.2% of the variance in observed traffic counts. The median percent difference from observed volumes is -3.0%, demonstrating minimal systematic bias.
Full methodology → Methods: Population Intelligence
Validation
Pathcast Validation documents the full accuracy study: scatter-plot analysis, MAPE and RMSE breakdowns by roadway type and traffic volume range, and the SQV (Scalable Quality Value) metric. The validation covers 24 months of data from 7,466 independent continuous traffic count locations not used in model estimation.
Jobs this family powers
- Movement Analysis — Understand hourly traffic volume on specific path segments, broken by day type and month. Pathcast by Date is the foundational traffic series that feeds OOH impression calculations and supports infrastructure research workflows.
- Exposure Modeling — Combine Pathcast traffic volumes (who passes a face) with Viewcast's viewshed geometry (who can see a face) and Popcast audience data (who those people are) to produce reach-and-frequency estimates for any OOH face or portfolio.