The purpose of this RFP is to obtain proposals from qualified professional firms to provide paid advertising and media measurement services for the Grand Junction, CO,.
The City of Grand Junction, Colorado (City) is seeking proposals from qualified firms with the experience, resources, and expertise to provide paid advertising and ad measurement services. Ad measurement includes both media attribution for conversions and ad impression quality (e.g., waste and bot traffic/click fraud). Visit Grand Junction (Visit GJ), a Department of the City, deploys paid media to promote the area as a destination to attract year-round travel and tourism, thereby providing for a sustainable and consistent economy and enhanced quality of life for residents. Visitor spending accounts for about 30 percent of the City’s sales tax revenue and helps to diversify the local economic base. Visit GJ measures the results of advertising through a variety of indicators depending on the nature of the campaign (e.g., long-term brand awareness/inspiration vs. short-term arrivals/conversions). However, the two primary Visit GJ outcome measures (i.e., conversions) are: (1) in-person visitor arrivals in the destination that can be attributed to Visit GJ marketing & advertising exposure, and (2) visitor spending in the destination. Visit GJ also measures ad results based on media metrics, including clickthrough-rate (CTR), cost-per-click (CPC), quality of impressions (e.g., lack of waste or bot traffic/click fraud), and average website landing page duration, among others. Visit GJ operates the official destination marketing website: VisitGrandJunction.com.
In addition, Visit GJ operates a walk-in Visitor Center staffed by volunteer Tourism Ambassadors year-round, seven days a week. The Official Visitor Guide is published by Visit GJ and is distributed to all 50 states and internationally. The City of Grand Junction is located along the I-70 corridor, halfway between Denver and Salt Lake City. Community partnerships and collaboration are vital to the success of destination marketing in Grand Junction. The City partners with a private management company to operate the Grand Junction Convention Center and Avalon Theatre located in the downtown Main Street area. Main Street is a well-preserved business and leisure district with award-winning public art sculptures in the area. The Grand Junction airport is the fourth largest airport in Colorado with numerous non-stop flights, including Denver, Salt Lake City, Dallas, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas. The City is facilitating the redevelopment of the Colorado riverfront area as a mixed-use, outdoor-friendly business and recreation area connected to downtown. The Grand Junction Sports Commission recruits and facilitates sporting events & tournaments in the local area.
Scope of Work:
The City is soliciting proposals to develop a travel destination advertising solution with results that can be attributed to the ad campaigns. Components include the following: (1) digital paid advertising campaigns (both managed-service and self-service will be considered), including search-engine marketing, display (both prospecting and retargeting), and other digital advertising formats (e.g., digital audio & video, native ads, and digital out-of-home), and (2) ad-measurement solutions relevant to destination marketing and tourism. Ad measurement includes both media attribution for conversions and ad impression quality (e.g., waste and bot traffic/click fraud). Proposers could provide some or all these components. If offering some components but not all, proposers should state which of these components the proposer wishes to provide. The City reserves the right to select more than one company under this solicitation to provide the full array of advertising and performance measurement services needed. More than one contract may be executed under this solicitation. There could be overlap among tasks within each component that could require collaboration with other agencies. The award of a contract for a component does not guarantee the agency exclusivity to perform the tasks under that component. Visit GJ places a high value on its ad agency partnerships. The contracted agencies should demonstrate a high level of expertise in the following areas: (1) media planning & buying (i.e., ad deployment), (2) account services, (3) data-driven marketing & advertising strategy, (4) channel & media mix planning, (5) target markets & segmentation, (6) behavioral audience profiling, (7) campaign monitoring & optimization, (8) collaboration, and (9) datadriven measurement, return on investment, and reporting of results. The current estimated ad deployment budget is $1-1.6 million per year total, which is derived from a lodging sales tax paid by out-of-town guests and subject to annual appropriation by the Grand Junction City Council.
Specific elements to address in a proposal include the following:
• Integrated (one view) people-based, cross-device, omni-channel (online and offline) vs. fragmented (multiple views) cookie-based, online only, and browser-based marketing approach.
• Mass & general segments vs. one-to-one, personalized messaging.
• Visitor arrival attribution methodology and reporting, including last click vs. multitouch attribution.
• Arrival-lift methodology and reporting, including incremental arrivals (i.e., visitors who can be attributed to the incremental effect of the ads vs. those who would have visited anyway) and sample/panel-based arrival methodology vs. population/one-to-one arrival methodology.
o On incremental visitors exposed to ads, including control group reporting, and how the solution addresses potential contamination of the control group.
o Describe how the proposed solution is deterministic or probabilistic modeling.
• Visitor economic yield and return on investment reporting.
• Segmenting and tracking of business vs. leisure travelers to target leisure travelers who are more addressable through marketing.
• Segmenting and tracking of leisure travelers by origin market, behavioral, and demographic profiles.
• Segmenting and tracking of leisure travelers by fly market vs. drive market.
• Key performance indicators, including a discussion of ad-media metrics, ROI & ROAS, and economic/visitor-revenue metrics by consumer category.
• State the actual number of individual, unique consumers (i.e., real people) within reach of the proposer’s ad-tech solution. o State percentage of unique consumer reach by mobile operating system (Android, Apple).
• Describe how the proposer’s solution would be affected by Apple iOS 14 and what the proposer intends to do to maintain its ability to deliver personalized, relevant ads after iOS 14 implementation.
• How will the proposer reach those who opt out on iOS devices?
• How will the proposer maintain reporting attribution at the individual level with deterministic and granular insights into mobile marketing return on ad spending after iOS 14 implementation?
• Explain how your solution uses first-party vs. third-party audience identity data to gain insights, predict future patterns, personalize content, and deliver ads.
• Include what percentage of your clients are Destination Marketing Organizations.
• What does the proposer’s solution do that other solutions cannot do (to the best of your understanding)?
• State how your solution protects brand safety, and prevents ad waste, bot traffic, and click fraud.
• State how your solution ensures consumer protection, privacy, and compliance protocols.
• Include any ad campaign spending thresholds that need to be met to obtain higher levels of campaign performance reporting.
• Share if you provide mid-campaign reporting and how often.
• Indicate how you approach inspirational campaigns compared to arrival/conversion campaigns.
• Describe your methodology for measuring length-of-stay in a destination.
• State how you can determine that a visitor is not just passing through en route to a different place. Include a description of your ability to measure visitors staying more than four hours.
• Do you have an online performance dashboard that we can access in real time? If so, please describe.
Visit GJ’s ad campaigns are multi-faceted and coordinated. The total advertising amount could be subdivided and allocated among the agencies selected under this solicitation. The ad agencies selected under this solicitation would create advertising solutions to market the new Grand Junction area brand to visitors. Proposers should describe their experience with tourism-related accounts. However, agencies with more general experience are also encouraged to apply for an award under this RFP. It is critical that proposals come from solutions that allow for performance data to be exported to Visit GJ for use within a Tableau software environment. Visit Grand Junction has an in-house data analytics platform, brand named Tourismo, to support data-driven destination marketing. Visit GJ uses various data sources, including social listening, website analytics, real-time consumer surveys, and location intelligence, which are integrated using Tableau-based visualizations to provide the department actionable insights and strategic direction. Proposers should state how data analytics and reporting from ad campaigns will integrate with the Tourismo data platform. Visit GJ has access to robust visitor profile data through a marketing research contract with Longwoods International. This visitor profile information would be made available to the selected agencies. Please include if your agency offers any value-added services, such as campaign creative services and, if so, if there is a cost for these additional services.
Due Date:
January 27, 2021 prior to 2:30 P.M
Address:
Susan Hyatt susanh@gjcity.org 970-244-1513
Relevant agencies to consider include Weber Shandwick and Porter Noveli.