AdTheorent, Inc., an advertising technology company using data, predictive targeting and machine learning to provide competitive advantages to marketers as measured by real-world business outcomes, and Explore Minnesota, the state’s tourism promotion office, today announced results of a successful Q4 2017 seasonal digital advertising campaign, as well as the launch of a new #OnlyinMN Q1 2018 campaign designed to drive visits to Minnesota during winter months. Building on data-driven learnings from previous seasonal campaigns with AdTheorent and tapping into pre-Super Bowl excitement, Explore Minnesota is leveraging machine learning-powered predictive advertising to deliver targeted digital ads highlighting Minnesota’s many unique winter activities.

Machine Learning-Powered Predictive Advertising Delivers Outstanding Results for Explore Minnesota

Based on the success of two seasonal campaigns in 2017, Explore Minnesota awarded AdTheorent the #OnlyinMN 2018 winter campaign.  Leading up to winter, AdTheorent partnered with Explore Minnesota for its fall campaign, designed to drive traffic to its website, as well as encourage engagement within the high-impact units.  AdTheorent ran the Explore Minnesota fall campaign from 9/1- 10/31 and it yielded a .61% mobile engagement rate, which is 103% higher than the travel vertical industry average.  Additionally, the secondary engagement rate for the campaign was 26% above industry average at 13.22%. Average rich media actions per engagement were .91 and time spent within the ad unit was 10.5 seconds. Consistent with campaign goals, top secondary actions included web visits, and swipes/clicks through the activity gallery.

“Using machine-learning and predictive advertising, AdTheorent has demonstrated its ability to intelligently target prospective travelers and drive engagement as measured by our unique KPIs,” said Leann Kispert, Senior Brand Strategist at Explore Minnesota.  “The Super Bowl is a rare opportunity for us to garner national attention and shine the spotlight on what Minnesota has to offer visitors in the winter months – a time that people wouldn’t necessarily think of visiting the Twin Cities.  Our goal with the winter digital campaign is not to encourage visits during the already-saturated Super Bowl, but to generate added visibility and excitement around what Minnesota has to offer outside of the big game.”

#ONLYinMN: Driving Excitement in Winter 2018

The #OnlyinMN 2018 campaign was conceived to be a high impact digital experience for the user designed to drive site traffic and educate consumers about winter activities in Minnesota.  The user experience flows from an initial rich media banner that expands into a full page rich media unit. The unit showcases an auto-play video featuring a Minnesota-specific activity/attraction, as well as an attraction carousel, allowing the user to scroll through uniquely-Minnesota activities and learn more about what interests them.  The primary goal of the campaign is engagement, and after being in market for only 10 days, mobile engagement is .74%, which is 147% above the travel industry average.  Initial positive results are due to the tuning of AdTheorent’s predictive models during the 2017 campaigns, and the 2018 campaign results will continue to pace higher as the models are continuously refined in real time.

“AdTheorent’s machine learning platform ingests and processes immense amounts of data, allowing it to learn over time which user attributes and conditions are most likely to yield engagement.  This results in continuous improvement toward any client-provided KPI,” said Josh Walsh, AdTheorent’s President, Media. “We are thrilled with the results to date for Explore Minnesota and we are confident that we will continue to outperform aggressive goals as our models continue to optimize for campaign objectives.”

To view the #OnlyinMN winter campaign, click here.