Skift Take

The benefits of investing in content marketing will become more clear over time, but the brands that take a risk and invest first will already stand out in the crowd.

Earlier this month Visit California made one of the largest investments in content marketing that we’ve yet to see from a tourism board.

The organization launched a 24-hour ad takeover of YouTube with 24 different videos playing on the site. It is now sharing several statistics about the impact of the major media buy:

  • Interaction ranged from 12 to 13 percent in the first 24 hours with an average interaction time of 8 to 9 minutes.
  • Desktop interaction across all markets translates to over 22,270 hours, or 2.5 years, of branded interaction time.
  • Increased awareness and engagement also led to a 7 percent increase in trip consideration among exposed audience, on par with historic results from media activity, and a 17 percent rise lift in likelihood to visit among exposed audience.

“The launch activity created a great deal of momentum for this exciting new content initiative,” a Visit California representative explains.

“Over the next 90 days, the focus will be on sustaining that momentum through a substantial digital paid media program combined with robust owned and earned activity.”

As a comparison, Visit St. Pete/Clearwater‘s recently successful orange juice carton campaign resulted in 306,157 site page views, 5,304 e-newsletter sign-ups,  2,019 destination magazine requests, and 146,401 free trip entries across Facebook, mobile, and online.

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Tags: content marketing, visitcalifornia, youtube

Photo credit: Clips of a few of the 24 videos shown as part of Visit California's YouTube takeover. Visit California / YouTube

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