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Explore Clay reports 6.2 million ad impressions, 70,000 website visits in April–June campaign
Summary
Marketing contractor Advanced Travel and Tourism told the Clay County Tourist Development Council that a spring campaign generated 6.2 million impressions, about 70,000 visits to ExploreClay.com and large gains in new users and page views; staff and contractors highlighted paid influencer content and new creative assets.
Kyle Stichtenot, senior director for Advanced Travel and Tourism and account manager for the Explore Clay/Clay County tourism account, told the Tourist Development Council on July 16 that the agency’s April–June campaign delivered 6,200,000 impressions and brought roughly 70,000 people to ExploreClay.com.
"All of that website traffic was quality engaged traffic," Stichtenot said, summarizing the quarter’s results. He and campaign manager Brooke Epps credited a mix of video, audio, social and targeted email for the gains.
Campaign specialists reported several specific performance metrics. Brooke Epps said video ads performed strongly: "Over a 117,000 of our video ads were watched in full, whether that was 1 minute, 30 seconds, or 15 seconds." Social posts generated heavy engagement — the team reported about 151,000 post engagements across platforms — and audio ads delivered very high completion rates on Spotify.
The team highlighted a targeted email effort aimed at the Orlando market. Stichtenot said the campaign sent two emails to the same 35,000 addresses and achieved a 48% open rate; he contrasted that with an industry open-rate benchmark he cited as roughly 20%.
Marketing staff also previewed partnerships and creative assets. Stichtenot said angler and television host Misty Wells filmed in Clay County and that the program is in editing; "we expect that it's going to air on Sunday, September 7, but sometimes things can get caught up in editing," he said. The agency said it will receive B-roll from the Misty Wells shoot for future marketing use.
On website performance, Brooke Epps reported outbound partner referral clicks of more than 1,000 in the quarter and a year‑over‑year increase in new users of 84% (about 47,649 additional new users). Page views were up roughly 223% year over year — an additional ~214,000 page views — which Epps attributed in part to frequent content updates by the Clay County tourism team.
The presentation urged continued collaboration between county staff and the contractor on creative sourcing, asset use and future targeted flights. Council members asked about how the email audience was obtained and whether the Misty Wells placement was paid; staff said the email list comes from a vendor and that the Misty Wells collaboration was a paid partnership that was vetted for relevance and authenticity.
The contractor closed by recommending further use of the new creative assets and additional targeted placements to convert interest into visits and bookings.
