Ad Theorent and Brogan & Partners have released campaign results from the Michigan Office of Highway Safety Planning’s (OHSP) 360-degree video ad campaign. The “Do a 360-degree” campaign, part of the statewide “Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over” initiative, was designed to raise awareness and prevent impaired driving. AdTheorent and Brogan & Partners combined an immersive 360-degree video ad unit with machine learning-powered predictive targeting to drive advertising engagement.

The “Do a 360-degree” digital campaign was conceived to engage users through a 360-degree video experience showcasing a night out at a bar, prompting users to contemplate the fact that one bar patron would drive drunk and kill a family of three. It starts with an unexpanded banner that launches into an interactive video experience. Once the ad unit is expanded, the 360-degree video plays and prompts the user to move his or her device to explore.

The video lets each user tilt his or her device in any direction in order to move around within the video, exploring the bar and immersing the user in the magnitude of the consequences of drinking and driving. (Desktop viewers tap left or right for the same 360-degree interaction). The video ends by encouraging the user to “Do a 360-degree” of his or her evening — make a plan, assess the surroundings, and avoid drunk driving to get home safely.

“In 2016, there were 274 alcohol-involved traffic fatalities and 32,610 drunk driving arrests in the state of Michigan and this is a very important issue that is completely avoidable if people will ‘Do a 360’ before heading out and make the life-saving choices available to those that drink responsibly,” said Michael L. Prince, director of the Michigan OHSP.

The primary goals for the campaign were to drive users to the ad unit, to facilitate secondary engagement within the unit (such as exploring the bar using the 360-degree functionality or accessing a web link) and to drive a high video completion rate among the target audience of males, ages 21-34. To attain these goals, AdTheorent leveraged custom machine-learning models to predictively target in-demo consumers with the highest probability of taking those actions.

Campaign engagement was strong across all environments: smartphone was 25 per cent higher than industry average, tablet was 12 per cent higher than industry average, and desktop was 100 per cent higher than industry average. Secondary engagement was also strong at 8.65 per cent, with the users averaging more than 7 seconds within the unit. Video completion rate was 88 per cent, which is 40 per cent higher than industry average. Interestingly, more than 93 per cent of users who commenced watching the video viewed at least 75 per cent of the video.

“We were thrilled to join forces with Brogan & Partners to drive awareness around impaired driving and we commend the Michigan Office of Highway Safety Planning for its efforts around this important public safety issue,” said James Lawson, COO of AdTheorent. “Given the dangers of impaired driving and the preventable nature of impaired-driving related injuries and fatalities, it was important to identify and target the right people and then deliver an impactful and thought-provoking experience — and this campaign was a success in both areas.”