Tourism Ads Triggered by Weather

Digital marketing firm Amobee has released performance results for an ad campaign created for the US Virgin Islands earlier this year. The campaign used weather data to target consumers at the moment they were most likely to book a holiday in the sun. When the temperature in seven US cities dropped below 32 degrees fahrenheit, multi-platform ads proclaiming “Come to where it’s tropical” were delivered.

According to Amobee, as a result of this campaign the US Virgin Islands tourism board successfully increased click-through rates across desktop by 20% and mobile by 22.5%.

Digital ad platform Jivox released research this week that shows weather is a key trigger for the personalisation of ads. The interaction rate for ads triggered by weather is 5.2%, compared to 3.2% for rich media ads (as defined by Google’s benchmark for rich media). The most effective trigger, however, is time: ads personalised to the time of day as a primary trigger demonstrated more than 3.5 times higher click-through rate than the Google Benchmark, according to the Jivox 2016 Benchmark Report.

Offering a solution to a specific need, trigger moments close the gap between contextually targeted marketing and conversion. In May, US food manufacturer Mars realised a playful approach to trigger marketing when it used an algorithm to discount Snickers chocolate bars when conversation on Australian Twitter became angry.

Contextual triggers will become even more important as digital behaviour shifts more towards messaging. Look out for our report on the messaging opportunity next week. For more on contextual advertising see Location-Based Mobile Marketing and State of Mobile: Summer 2016.