Moab board approves $1.8 million contract with Madden, ties 2026 media plan to events and UT co‑ops

The Moab Tourism Advisory Board voted unanimously on Jan. 13 to adopt Madden Media's 2026 media plan, which centers on a funnel approach aimed at discovery, trust and conversion and ties paid buys to several major events.

Leslie Roball, senior director of destination strategy at Madden, told the board the agency will continue tactics used in 2025 — connected TV, YouTube, paid social, programmatic banners, and paid search (including Performance Max) — and will add measurement approaches that use OTA and aggregated transaction data to estimate in‑market spend and length of stay.

"If you're going to purchase a product, if you're gonna go to a place, you need to make sure you understand what it is and what that differentiator is," Roball said, summarizing the plan's emphasis on clear, targeted messaging.

Budget details presented to the board: "Our total contract amount is, $1,800,000, and you've seen that broken out," a staff speaker stated during the meeting, and the board heard that the office also budgets roughly $300,000 in MOT‑owned paid media (international co‑op and other buys). Staff said billboard leases run about $25,000 per month. Taken together, the contract plus staff‑managed paid media were described to the board as producing a combined paid media line of about $2.1 million for 2026 (transcript had an extra set of zeros; the itemization — $1,800,000 + $300,000 — supports a $2,100,000 total).

The plan calls out seasonal and event priorities — Easter Jeep Safari, America250 activities and the World Cup — and includes work on landing pages to improve conversion and length of stay, partnerships with OTAs (Expedia, Hopper, Sojern, Adara) and exploration of platform buys such as Reddit and specialty buys with chat‑enabled tools for audience insight. The agency also highlighted co‑op buys with the Utah Office of Tourism that provide added leverage for international lead generation.

The motion to approve the plan was initiated by the board's vice chair (the speaker identified as the vice chair during introductions and initiating the motion in the transcript). Chair Laurie McFarland called the vote; members responded "aye," and the motion passed unanimously. The transcript does not record a roll‑call vote tally or the name of a seconder.

What comes next: staff will finalize contracts and move buys into their scheduled windows; Roball and Madden staff said they will continue reporting on KPIs and provide the board with campaign performance as buys run through the year.

Note on sources and transcription: where the meeting transcript contained an apparent numeric transcription error (stating "$2,100,000,000"), the article reports the corrected combined paid media figure of about $2,100,000 based on the itemized figures ($1,800,000 + $300,000) presented during the meeting.