Research and data gathering involved several different activities starting with developing a deep understanding of the show. To do this, we reviewed scripts, had viewings of early episodes, discussed the show's hooks and key content themes, and developed a show brief which laid out the potential targets for the campaign. In addition to dealing with the provocative question, "What would you do if there were no consequences?," the show deals with several themes surrounding human nature, artificial intelligence and the blurring of the lines between them.

Next, we set out to further define and prioritize our audience targets. Audience insights were generated against core, influencer and expansion targets including demo/psychographics, media consumption habits, and interests and affinities. Audiences were sized according to 1st and 2nd party data availabilities, and prioritized based on estimated levels of campaign engagement.

Last, the campaign experience was designed to align audiences with specific media activations.

We began by targeting our highly affluent audience with high impact direct response creative advertising the fictional park as if it were an authentic destination where they could “Live Without Limits”. The ads drove massive engagement and ignited conversation across the social web. Meanwhile, to drive reach we dropped the first Westworld trailer to our core audiences. Pre-premiere analysis showed opportunity to grow tech and female audiences. For tech, we embedded an AI concierge chatbot inside of programmatic placements. To female audiences we showed off the show’s tremendous female cast. Premiere weekend we added Facebook Canvas and YouTube bumper ads with a focus on “tune in” messaging. In-season expansion was driven by targeting lookalike audiences with “catch-up” creative during critical plot moments as well as showcasing the show’s diverse talent to multicultural audiences. For the 90-minute finale we leveraged "Critical Acclaim" creative to drive binge behavior and a huge finale.

Our media strategy was enabled through a combination of audience insights and analysis, and informed over the flight through proprietary awareness and intent to tune-in tracking methods. The combination of data allowed us to make constant optimizations to our media program, adjust audience makeup and targeting parameters and refresh and refactor creative. For 3 months before premiere, and 10 weeks during the season we adjusted the media plan, audiences, budgets and weighting. Strategic audience expansion based on top performing audiences happened in real-time, leveraging lookalike functionality across DMP, Facebook and YouTube. The relentless effort was a true success. In total, our audience-first digital campaign served over 211M impressions to highly-targeted audiences, resulting in over 56M views of key trailers and promos, and helped propel Westworld to an average of 12 million viewers across all platforms making it the most-watched first season of an HBO original series ever.