Tennessee Vacation MatchMaker. Pre-roll ads edited in real time to match all the viewer’s online behaviors, likes and interests.

In the time it takes to load pre-roll, MatchMaker analyzes millions of data points about the viewer — their location, browsing history, purchase behavior, music interests, social media activity and more. Then it scans a matrix of hundreds of video clips of Tennessee activities to find matches, editing a commercial perfectly aligned to their interests in real time. So rather than seeing a tourism ad that tries to appeal to everyone, viewers saw a custom commercial created just for them.

Dynamic ads aren’t new. But achieving this level of real-time personalization meant utilizing technology in a new way. Before, customized content was limited to overlays, or created beforehand and dynamically served to an audience. Now we were informing, creating and serving ads in real time.

So we created an edit with five variable sections, then developed a matrix of hundreds of video clips of Tennessee activities. A data provider collected all the impression data about the viewer in real time, and then MatchMaker matched them to related Tennessee video clips and a commercial was instantly cut together and served as pre-roll.

At the time of this entry, the campaign had been in market for two weeks.

o 327,237 hours of video exposure

o 46% increase in Tennessee tourism’s website traffic

o 93% of people surveyed said the ads inspired them to take a vacation to Tennessee within the next year.

o CTR 3x industry average

o 53% completion rate (3% more than industry benchmark)

o 13,645 itineraries shared on social media

Data was at the core of our campaign from strategy to execution. Based on research we knew that the more personal and relevant the content was to our audience, the more likely we were to make a connection and inspire them to travel. This led to our idea of creating and serving personalized pre-roll ads in real time. Data was essential in matching user interests and behaviors with relevant video clips within seconds. By leveraging data we were able to create thousands of video variations with a level of personalization and relevancy that was previously unheard of in advertising.

Tennessee has a diverse set of offerings. Knowing relevancy increases engagement, our strategy was to use data to create a completely personal Tennessee commercial for each individual viewer.

But we needed a media channel that could leverage the technology required to bring that strategy to life.

Because people watch travel videos online, we knew video was key. And pre-roll, specifically, gave us the best chance to achieve our vision.

Our targeting was a bit of a paradigm shift in advertising. We didn’t create content with a target audience in mind. Instead the content was created in real time based on data of each viewer.

The state of Tennessee wanted to attract summer travelers, but research showed that potential visitors were unsure of how Tennessee was relevant to them, and in turn, saw it as a “drive-through” state and not a vacation destination.

On top of that, Americans take less vacation than any other industrialized nation. And because of that, labor over where to go for almost 45 days. They want every moment to be perfect. So we had to prove to travelers that Tennessee was the perfect place to spend their precious time off.