Ad tech firm AdTheorent and Proof Advertising, a full-service ad agency Proof Advertising, have released mid-campaign results from the ‘Be a Part of the Scene in San Antonio’ mobile advertising push for the San Antonio Convention & Visitors Bureau (SACVB).

AdTheorent and Proof Advertising collaborated on the rich media ad unit, which allows consumers to experience San Antonio from their mobile device through an interactive ‘selfie’ ad feature. The campaign is running all summer to drive awareness about San Antonio and encourage travellers to visit.

The mobile campaign was conceived to be a highly engaging and immersive ad experience for the user. The user experience flows from an initial rich media banner that opens into a full page rich media unit showcasing a video of San Antonio attractions along with two calls to action: “Snap your San Antonio Selfie” and “Visit SanAntonio.com.”

Each time a user taps the ‘selfie’ button, he or she is able to take a photo or use a pre-existing selfie from the phone’s library to be inserted into one of four unique scenes, three of which are San Antonio attractions and the fourth of which is a humorous dinosaur head image.

Users are also able share their customized San Antonio-themed selfies on social media via pre-populated Facebook and Twitter messages, posting the image as is or choosing to edit the copy before sharing. In addition, users have the option to save the images to their device library for sharing at a later time.

“Last summer we did an event series road show and took San Antonio to different cities. We had backdrops of things you can only find in San Antonio and let people take fun selfies using #SeeYourSelfieInSA” said Casandra Matej, executive director at San Antonio Convention & Visitors Bureau “One part of this year’s summer thrills push, ‘Be a Part of the Scene,’ takes what we started last summer to the next level. We’ve seen a 44 per cent increase in mobile traffic for this summer period to date compared to last year, underscoring how spot on we were with choosing the right partners to leverage mobile rich media connecting with the right set of summer family travellers. Proof has strategically and thoughtfully woven San Antonio into a consumer’s personal photo library and mobile device.”

The primary goal for the campaign is to drive secondary actions and engagement within the ad unit, including travel intent actions, as well as social sharing. Accordingly, AdTheorent uses its predictive targeting capabilities to target only users predisposed to take those actions.

At the campaign’s mid point, the clickthrough rate (CTR) is described as “strong (60 per cent higher than industry average)” and secondary engagement even stronger at 67 per cent, which the companies say is around six-times the industry average of 11.5 per cent. Additionally, the ad unit is delivering against engaging consumers, who are spending an average of 102 seconds engaging with rich media unit. Of the users who took a secondary action within the unit, 7 per cent completed the final step of sharing socially or saving the selfie images that the user created within the rich media unit.

In addition to the selfie engagement actions, users are taking actions that signal travel planning and research – yielding a 3.86 per cent “intent to travel” conversion rate. The signals of intent to travel include key actions on the VisitSanAntonio.com site, including “browse and book” page visits, leisure guide requests, mobile app conversions and ‘Go’ button clicks which are made after inputting travel dates.

“We’ve been encouraging our brand and agency clients to move away from click as a primary KPI and capitalize on mobile’s unique ability to provide an immersive experience, and we commend Proof Advertising and San Antonio Convention & Visitors Bureau for their forward thinking in mobile,” said AdTheorent CEO Anthony Iacovone. “The fact that we are seeing such strong secondary engagement points not only to the strength of the creative, but also illustrates that the campaign targeting is spot on, which underscores the effectiveness of predictive targeting.”