M Motionworks Population Intelligence

Popcast™ Anytime

Motionworks Popcast™ Anytime provides the estimated occupancy of any US Census Block Group at any hour of the day, for any day type, going back to January 2019. Unlike Popcast™ at Home, which counts residents by where they live, Popcast™ Anytime counts everyone present in a geography regardless of where they call home.

Data Dimensions

  • Frequency Data are updated monthly, released on the 15th of the following month.
  • Geographic coverage United States, at the Census Block Group level.
  • Zone systems All Census Block Groups in the United States are included.
  • Date availability January 2019 to present.
  • Latency Data are released within 15 days of the close of each month.

Methodology

Popcast™ Anytime is derived from a panel of opted-in mobile devices. Each month, a quality-filtered daily device panel is constructed, retaining only devices with sufficient weekly activity and without anomalous GPS patterns. Device dwells are weighted by a population multiplier that scales the observed panel to the full US population. Hourly occupancy is calculated by averaging weighted device presence across all qualifying hours of that type in the month — producing a representative estimate of who is present, not a count of a specific day.

Schema

Motionworks delivers Popcast™ Anytime via Snowflake secure view. The current schema (v2.3) is described below.

Name Description Type Example
place_id Motionworks place or region identifier. string 269335
yyyymm Year and month encoded as YYYYMM. integer 202304
day_type Day type identifier: 1 = Monday–Thursday (weekdays), 2 = Friday, 3 = Saturday, 4 = Sunday. integer 1
hour Local-time hour of the day (0–23). integer 14
motionworks_segment_id Identifier for the population segment the row is broken out by. See Population Segments. string 0
geography_id Geography reference for the home location of the persons counted. string US2020XXBG360610031001
days Number of calendar days included in the aggregation. integer 30
activities Average activities arriving at the place during the identified hour. May be null for earlier months. float 512.7
visits Average visits arriving at the place during the identified hour of the week. May be null for earlier months. float 498.1
occupancy Estimated average number of persons present during this hour, broken out by population segment. float 486.3
vintage Date and time the population was summarized. May be null for earlier months. datetime 2026-06-18 00:00:00
release_version Motionworks release version associated with this record. string 20260618

Version differences

  • v2.3 (current) is broken out by population segment (motionworks_segment_id) and adds days, activities, visits, and vintage. It is paired with Placecast™ 2.3 and uses 2020 US Census geography.
  • v2.2 reports occupancy without the population-segment breakout: place_id, yyyymm, day_type, hour, geography_id, occupancy, release_version. It is paired with Placecast™ 2.2 and uses 2010 US Census geography.