• by Steve Smith  @popeyesm, November 27, 2012

According to location analytics firm Placed, Black Friday was especially good to American Eagle, Macy’s and Victoria’s Secret. Those stores saw the greatest increase in physical retail visitors on Nov. 23 compared to store averages since Nov. 1. Placed, which maintains a panel of 36,000 opted-in smartphone phone users whose retail visits are tracked and aggregated, says that foot traffic to these brands was up by a factor of 4X on Friday. Other big winners for the day were J.C. Penney and Apple Stores, which saw a 4X and 3X gain as well.

While a number of major outlets opened on Thanksgiving night in an attempt to get a jump on the holiday shopper market share, Placed’s findings remain unclear about whether the tactic ultimately paid off for these companies. The brands like Toys ‘R’ Us, Sears and Kmart saw less of an increase on Friday relative to the shops that observed the holiday on Thursday. One of the largest general retailers in the space -- Target, for instance -- was open on Thanksgiving but did not even rank among the store chains with the biggest Black Friday bump. Placed tells Mobile Marketing Daily that the brand fell just outside the chart of 20, coming in as 21st in visitor growth among retailers.