Like so many of us in this industry, I like to think that knowing how the proverbial sausage gets made leaves me less susceptible to advertising’s influence.
Even still, there’s something about travel commercials – especially ones produced by tourism boards – that always make me want to pack up and go to whatever fun new location they’re telling me about.
That impulse is what makes CTV ads such an important part of the typical tourism bureau’s marketing strategy, according to Lauren Cleland, the VP of strategic marketing for Visit Savannah in Georgia.
“We’re selling an experience. That’s something that needs to be felt, and that can’t be done in an animated banner ad or a full-page print ad in a publication,” Cleland told me.
Which isn’t to say that Visit Savannah doesn’t incorporate programmatic display ads into its marketing strategy, because it absolutely does. (Apparently, ads that appear on Disney-related travel sites are particularly successful, likely because it’s only a four-hour drive from Savannah to Orlando.)
When it comes to brand awareness, though, nothing beats CTV.
“We need the consumer to get an idea of what they will feel when they are in our market, and there is no better format for that than video,” added Cleland.
Tracking travelers
Like many destination marketing organizations (DMOs), Visit Savannah is a nonprofit organization that’s funded through a combination of public and private sources, such as Georgia’s hotel-motel fee.
But being a nonprofit means Visit Savannah doesn’t have a direct way to track the success of its advertising campaigns beyond less accurate proxy metrics like impressions, click-through rates and cost per click.
“We have no point of sale,” said Cleland. “So when it comes to conversions or return on ad spend, that is much harder for us to measure.”
After all, when someone sees a Visit Savannah ad, they might check out the organization’s website – or they might just book a flight or hotel room directly, without any indication that they were inspired to do so first.
To overcome this hurdle, Visit Savannah works with a number of third-party vendors for true attribution, including partner booking sites and campaign measurement services.
Some of these vendors, said Cleland, can track whether someone saw an ad and then booked a flight or hotel stay with a partner brand. Other vendors offer geolocation-based attribution solutions, which can even determine when a person physically shows up in the Savannah area.
Curated luxury
For one of their recent CTV campaigns in November last year, Visit Savannah collaborated with SSP TripleLift on a number of measurement studies, including an eye-tracking study that gave their marketing team a better understanding of what types of content resonated best with their audience.
Cleland said she was especially excited by the people who chose to continue watching the ad portion of one of TripleLift’s split-screen, content-squeeze-back-style formats.
“The fact that so many of them actually chose to change focus for more than half a second indicates to me that this was the right audience who is interested in our type of content,” she said.
Having a more engaged audience is especially important for Visit Savannah, because the organization’s goal isn’t necessarily to draw more crowds – doing so could lead to crowding and overtourism, said Cleland. Rather, with the TripleLift CTV campaign in particular, Visit Savannah was looking for high-income, luxury-minded audiences who will spend more, stay longer and invest more into local cultural experiences.
TripleLift tapped into this audience – specifically, adults over the age of 25 who travel twice a year with a net worth of $500,000 or more – with a set of custom in-show formats across premium publishers on Roku, including Tastemade and the Hallmark Channel.
Moving forward, TripleLift plans to “lean even more” into both curation and immersive ad formats based on increased client interest, said Ryan Levitt, VP of communications at TripleLift.
“With the Roku split screen, we’re not pissing the consumer off,” said Levitt. “They’re not having their viewing experience distracted. They are getting inspired. They have the opportunity to pause what they’re watching and go back to it and delve deeper into the Visit Savannah experience.”
Questions? Comments? Concerns? Float ’em my way at victoria@adexchanger.com.
