The Opportunity

Visit Montana wanted to increase visitation during the winter season while creating awareness of rural communities throughout the state. It needed to promote the benefits of travel during the winter season, encouraging both in-state and out-of-state travelers to explore the lesser-known areas of Montana. Areas such as Big Sky, Bozeman, and Great Falls were over-traveled areas; we needed to push visitors to explore lesser-known destinations, ski at smaller mountains, and ice fish at smaller lakes.

The Strategy

Medium Giant partnered with two additional agencies. Medium Giant was tasked with handling Visit Montana’s paid media, while an outside research and analytics agency conducted surveys and compiled research to determine target markets and personas, and another creative agency was responsible for social content, messaging, and creative assets.

Medium Giant implemented a data-driven, multichannel media strategy to maximize reach and engagement. We used programmatic advertising, paid social media, influencer partnerships, paid search ads and native, and video content placements. We also utilized dynamic-triggered Weather Ads deployed via programmatic display, Meta, and DOOH (digital out-of-home) based on real-time weather forecasts to ensure that our messaging was relevant and reached the right audience at the right time.

Pixel Strategy
All of our platform media was tracked using third-party pixels from Google, Bing, Meta, Pinterest, and Campaign Manager 360. All creatives were trafficked with UTM codes using a concatenated system assigned by our agency’s naming convention (client name, campaign name, season, tactic, creative name, ad size, audience persona, and creative concept).

Our display leveraged floodlight tags via our ad server CM360, which were applied to the Google Tag Manager container tag. Within the primary tags of all digital channels, Zartico UTMs were appended by allowing our ad servers/walled-garden platforms access into Zartico's operating system for a read of foot traffic and economic impact in the state associated with our paid advertising campaign. Additional pixels were added to the back end of Montana’s site to include site retargeting in our programmatic display efforts with our DSP, paid social campaigns on Meta, travel-endemic display and video through Adara, and online video initiatives with YouTube via the brand-safety platform Sightly.

The Results

Medium Giant’s multifunnel strategy leveraged data-driven insights to inform targeting tactics, ensuring the media campaign reached the most relevant audiences at the right time with messaging tailored to their interests and travel behaviors.

The campaign successfully drove awareness and interest in Montana as a premier winter destination, leading to measurable increases in engagement and visitation.

By combining data-driven targeting, compelling storytelling, strategic media placement, and highly nuanced tracking, the campaign successfully positioned Montana as a must-visit winter destination, laying the foundation for sustained seasonal growth in the years to come.