POCONO MOUNTAINS CASE STUDY:How We Measured Visitor Trend And Increased Tax ROI

Executive Summary

Pocono Mountains Visitors Bureau and Arrivalist took their already fruitful partnership to the next level, measuring visitor trends and boosting tax ROI.

Pocono Mountains Visitors Bureau (PMVB) is a private, non-profit, membership-based organization established. PMVB is the official destination marketing organization for the Pocono Mountains region of Carbon, Monroe, Pike and Wayne counties.

Their mission is to enhance the economic and environmental well-being of their region and members through the promotion of tourism and the comprehensive marketing.

Arrivalist is a Location Attribution Analytics platform that empowers marketers with new metrics to evaluate the link between marketing exposures and market visitation.

We analyze big data to evaluate which media exposures motivate consumers to travel to new destinations, yielding powerful new insights as to how -- in aggregate -- media displays influence travel behaviors.

Our offerings:• Location tracking• Campaign Effectiveness

• Analytics• Custom reporting

The ChallengePMVB partnered with Arrivalist in 2016 to fulfill a primary

objective: measure ad effectiveness by validating visitor arrival numbers to The Poconos. Arrivalist anonymously tracked a representative sample of Poconos visitors during their summer campaign using Arrivalist A2, an attribution tracking interface.

After PMVB received this report, the team expressed

interest in understanding travel patterns in key visitor markets from exposed/unexposed visitors,

and to identify and increase visitation in opportunity markets.

Here is how Arrivalist provided PMVB with granular insight to their market and helped the organization achieve all 3 objectives.

Arrivalist Methodology

The PMVB Journey With Arrivalist

Date: 05/9/2016 – 04/19/2018

Origin DMA Exposed Arrivals by %

New York 47.3%

Philadelphia 34.7%

Harrisburg, PA 4.9%

Wilkes Barre/Scranton 1.7%

Washington, DC 1.5%

Boston 1.1%

Baltimore 1.1%

Hartford/New Haven 0.7%

Pittsburgh 0.7%

Johnstown/Altoona 0.4%

The Discovery2016

Top advertising markets were the New York and Philadelphia metro areas.

1 PMVB used Arrivalist A2

D.C. and Baltimore were untapped opportunity markets.

Objective 1 Measure ad effectiveness by validating visitor arrival numbers to The Poconos

To look at exposed computing devices arriving to The Poconos after media exposure.

Poconos then looked at Arrivals rates from those who visited their website and found a surprising insight:

PMVB increased impression numbers in D.C. by 66% and in Baltimore by 93%

PMVB took action on this insightTaking Action 2017 2

Objective 1 Measure ad effectiveness by validating visitor arrival numbers to The Poconos

YoY increase in attributed arrivals for summer campaigns

Attributed Visitation IncreasedThe Result2017 3

Objective 1 Measure ad effectiveness by validating visitor arrival numbers to The Poconos

71%

YoY increase in raw visitation 33%

Moving to A3

PMVB Upgraded from A2 to A3The Implementation – Part 22017 1Objective 1 Use location data to identify opportunities to increase visitation from new origin markets

Objective 2 Better understand visitor behavior while in market –cross visitation and duration of stay at local resorts and attractions.

Objective 3 Create a more robust ROI formula that validates our marketing strategy

Origin DMA Arrival (%)

New York, NY 59.5%

Philadelphia, PA 25.2%

Harrisburg, PA 3.1%

Wilkes Barre, PA 2.4%

Washington, DC 1.8%

Baltimore, MD 1.4%

Hartford, CT 0.5%

Syracuse, NY 0.5%

Pittsburgh, PA 0.4%

Johnstown, PA 0.4%

PMVB Upgraded from A2 to A3Defining Arrivalist2017 2

Features Arrivalist 2.0 Arrivalist 3.0

Accuracy 5-30 miles 30 Feet

ExposureBased on IP Geo(Weekly updates & Verified by GPS

Based on GPS data matched to cookie data

Arrival Tracking

All exposed devicesTracking 80 million devices/month, regardless of exposure

Arrivals Device exposure required Measures exposed and unexposed devices

Use Cases

➢ Days to Arrival

➢ Best Performing Media Sources and Types

➢ Top Performing Origin Markets & Surprise Markets

➢ Best Performing Sequences of Exposure

➢ Arrivals per click

➢ Measure Intra-State Visitation (Users traveling within state)

➢ Incremental Visitation from Exposed Devices

➢ Point of Interest / Hotels

➢ Incremental Time in Market from Exposed Devices

➢ Cross Device Arrivals

➢ Measure Incremental Impact Campaign by Campaign

➢ Measure overlapping attraction visits

Arrivalist Methodology

30+ mm Devices SubPanelOf devices most relevant to our client’s market

All Cookies Tracked by Arrivalist

Client ReachClient Cookies Subsection

Device + Cookies Overlap

Device + Client Cookies

Control Group Not Exposed

Arrivals

Devices Enter Destination

CONFIDENTIAL

SECONDARYORIGIN PRIMARY

User B

1) User A and User B are alike

2) They both live in New York

3) They have data for the same time period

4) They have similar attributes

5) They both can be measured for exposure

6) Difference: User A has seen the travel ads

User A

Methodology Control Groups

Date: 12/01/2017 – 03/31/2018

User A

User D

December 5 Home: New York, NY

December 5Home: New York, NY

December 20Travel: Miami, FL

Dec 12 Dec 19

Methodology Control Groups

User B User C

December 25Travel: Miami, FL

User E User F

Date: 12/01/2017 – 03/31/2018

Incremental Visitation Rate fromExposed User Profiles:

• By Media Source

• By Origin Market

• By Media Type

• By Campaign/ Creative

Incremental increase in Duration of Stay from Exposed User Profiles:

• By Media Source

• By Origin Market

• By Media Type

• By Campaign/ Creative

Arrival Lift™ Stay Lift™

Arrivalist measures true visitation ”incrementally”

Creatives used in the D.C. & Baltimore markets

Creating a new ROI FormulaIncremental Tax Collection

ROI Calculations

Step 1:

Calculate Panel Media Cost

Step 2:

Calculate Incremental Arrival Volume

Step 3:

Calculate Incremental Arrivals’ Spend Using Average Spend from Poconos Tourism Pays page

Panel Media Cost= (Panel Exposures/1000)*CPM

Incremental Arrival Volume = Panel Arrival Volume * Arrival Lift*Day Trips and Overnights are separated

Day Tripper Spend = $158 per dayOvernight Guest Spend = $494

28.80%

71.20%

0% 20% 40% 60% 80%

Same-Day

Overnight

Length of Stay Breakout

ROI Calculations

Panel Media Cost

Avg. Overnight Spend –

Panel Media Cost

Bed Tax ROI = X Bed Tax Rate

Incremental ROI is a great way to equally measure all the media vendors. It helps us understand the most investment worthy vendor that turns a non-interested device into an arrival.

Given that Arrivals are a representative sampling from Arrivalist Panel, the ROI analysis is helpful in understanding the return on investment for each dollar spend on media vendors.

*Lodging Expenditure %

This translated into a strong tax ROI

Reporting returns in tax dollars puts the benefits of destination marketing investment into terms that community stakeholder groups can immediately understand.

Given that Arrivals are a representative sampling from Arrivalist Panel, the ROI analysis is helpful in understanding the return on investment for each dollar spend on media vendors.

$113,678.93Overnight ROI

$2.40Same Day ROI Bed Tax ROI

$23,153.95

*Numbers provided by PMBV

Summer 2017 ROI

Measuring the Impact of Media on Duration of Stay

We measured average time in market for PMVB’s top DMAs and saw significant increase in exposed arrivals

CONFIDENTIAL