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Bangor and the Downtown Bangor Partnership will begin using an artificial intelligence program that tracks foot traffic later this year.
The program, Placer.ai, will be used by the Downtown Bangor Partnership to see how many people are attending events or responding to promotions, said Betsy Lundy, executive director of the nonprofit that promotes and markets activities in downtown Bangor.
“Resources are finite within a small nonprofit, so we only have so much staff time to dedicate to each of our endeavors, and it can help us start to figure out which things we’re doing are the most effective,” Lundy said.
This will be the first time the organization has used a foot-traffic tracking program, Lundy said.
Multiple municipalities in Greater Bangor, including Brewer and Old Town, are also slated to start using the program this year.
The decision to move forward with using Placer.ai comes months after Old Town residents pushed back against the city’s plan to use the tracking program over privacy concerns. Meanwhile, economic development staff in Brewer and Caribou previously said the program has helped them better market events because it shows where attendees come from and how long they spend at the event.
Placer.ai uses data from cellphones in a given area to track how many people are at a specific place at a specific time. Placer compiles data from cellphones in the area and uses artificial intelligence to aggregate it, according to the company’s website. There have to be 50 or more phones going through the given area for the program to track any information, according to the company’s website.
The program uses data collected from smartphone apps used by people in a specific area, including where they were before and went after they entered the area, how long they spent there, and personal information like age. The identity of the person being tracked is not disclosed and none of the information is accessible in real time, according to Placer.ai’s website.
With the use of Placer, foot traffic for events in downtown Bangor like the sidewalk art festival could be compared with previous years to see what marketing efforts have worked, Lundy said.
Downtown Bangor Partnership previously used programs like Datafy and Buxton that offer similar data about credit and debit card purchases and visitor information, but Placer is better at showing accurate foot-traffic data, Lundy said.
The organization will join multiple nearby towns in using the program through a Placer account set up by the Greater Bangor Recreational Economy for Rural Communities, a nonprofit that promotes local tourism.
Downtown Bangor Partnership paid to use the program last year but has not had access to it yet, Lundy said.
It’s unclear which communities have opted to have access to the data.
Lisa Sturgeon, chair of the Greater Bangor Recreation Economy for Rural Communities, declined to comment when asked which communities are using the program, what they are using it for, and when it will start being used.
Despite pushback from Old Town residents, Sturgeon said in April that the organization looked into other programs similar to Placer, including Datafy, but decided to stick with the Israel-based company.
The program has been implemented in Maine previously. Caribou currently uses Placer, and Brewer utilized it in 2024, both for marketing efforts for events.
When asked about how Placer would be utilized in Bangor, Director of Development Anne Krieg wasn’t available to speak about how the city will use the program.
Bangor has not implemented it yet, city spokesperson David Warren said.
Old Town Economic Development Director Amy Collinsworth said the city isn’t using Placer yet and hasn’t signed a contract, but did not say when the city would.
Downtown Bangor Partnership, which is not funded by the city, will not be using Placer the same way Bangor would, but it could use the data to justify the city contributing to the cost for events, Lundy said.
Although residents have previously brought forward concerns about their privacy where Placer is implemented, Lundy said residents should understand that the data has already been collected and will continue to be. The only change is that communities are now paying to access it, she said.
“Whether or not any of [the communities] choose to tap into that data, and this is the thing that citizens really have to wrap their head around, that data is being collected,” Lundy said.
