How Azira and Simpleview Increased Awareness and Drove 472K+ Visits to Mobile, Alabama
Key Insights:
Business Challenge:
Position Mobile, Alabama as a premier Mardi Gras destination and increased visitation during the competitive winter travel season.
Solution:
Azira and Simpleview launched a data-driven digital ad campaign that combined Azira’s precise audience insights and measurement & attribution to increase awareness and drive visitation to Mobile during Mardi Gras.
“With Azira’s location intelligence and attribution tools, we were able to connect digital engagement to real-world visitation—delivering measurable value and elevating Mobile’s visibility nationwide.”
"Azira and Simpleview helped us reach the right audiences with the right message at the right moment. The campaign not only drove visitors to Mobile but also brought recognition that we are the original home of Mardi Gras.”
Results at a Glance
Background
Mobile, Alabama—widely recognized as the true birthplace of Mardi Gras—has a rich cultural legacy rooted in authentic traditions and regional pride. Despite its historic significance, the city has often flown under the radar compared to more prominent destinations like New Orleans, especially among national audiences during the peak winter travel season.
Challenge
With limited visibility beyond the Southeast USA and growing competition from larger markets, Visit Mobile faced the challenge of elevating its destination and driving visitation during a narrow window leading up to Mardi Gras. By partnering with Azira and Simpleview (A Granicus Company), they set out to change perceptions of Mobile as a destination and streamline campaign performance and management.
Solution
Azira and Simpleview teamed up to launch a data-driven, multichannel digital ad campaign that brought the city of Mobile’s Mardi Gras story to life. Powered by Azira’s audience insights, Visit Mobile uncovered unexpected visitor origins from neighboring states and cities, revealing previously untapped markets with high visitor potential. These insights enabled more strategic targeting across both the household and social level, identifying not just individuals, but networks of likely travelers based on shared behaviors and visitation patterns. The campaign was activated across paid search, social media, programmatic display, connected TV, and Spotify audio. The ads highlighted Mobile’s unique traditions and sparked strong engagement and positive sentiment, while retargeting tactics re-engaged interested visitors with timely, relevant messaging. Throughout the campaign, Azira’s measurement and attribution capabilities helped refine targeting and optimize performance across platforms, ensuring the ads reached the right audiences at the right time and drove return on ad spend.
In addition, Simpleview and Azira enhanced Visit Mobile’s reporting by developing a model that integrates web and media attribution to connect website visitors with hotel bookings. This model will expand to include restaurants, attractions, and digital out-of-home (DOOH) attribution.
Results
The campaign used precise targeting and engaging creative to stand out in a competitive travel space, turning digital engagement into measurable, real-world results:
- The campaign drove over 472K+ total visits and 76K+ unique visits to Mobile during the Mardi Gras season, and over 3M+ visits over an 8-month window, significantly boosting tourism during a highly competitive travel season.
- Over 193K+ users were driven directly to the Mardi Gras landing page, showing strong digital engagement and interest in Mobile’s events.
- 900+ new social media followers were gained, and in Q1 alone the campaign saw over 1,800 shares, 842 comments and 491 saves recorded by targeted audiences, helping expand Visit Mobile’s digital presence and long-term reach.
- 88% VTR seen on CTV and 0.37% CTR seen on programmatic display, significantly higher than industry averages of 85% and and 0.1% respectively.
- The campaign generated $271,672 in Potential Economic Value (PEV) in March—a 16.8% increase—driven by a 29.8% rise in exposed overnight visitors, using Simpleview and Azira’s advanced reporting model.
With data-driven insights and real-world measurement and attribution, the campaign reignited awareness and reestablished Mobile as Mardi Gras’ true birthplace. As we analyze the data heading into Mardi Gras 2026, the lasting impact of the campaign is clear: organic traffic to the Mardi Gras page is up 41.5%, new organic users are up 46%, returning users are up 44.5%, and organic search impressions have grown by 1.2M.
Looking ahead, Visit Mobile will continue driving meaningful visitation by leveraging the authentic user-generated comments gained from this campaign as social proof in future messaging. With Azira and Simpleview, Visit Mobile will continue to optimize future campaigns and further position Mobile as a premier travel destination for Mardi Gras and beyond.