Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi and Spark Foundry partner with ADARA to Measure Digital Marketing Effectiveness

Unique data, media and business partnership is a first for the Middle East and enables optimised digital marketing investments to drive tourism throughout Abu Dhabi.

ADARA, the world’s leading travel data co-op, has announced a partnership with the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi (DCT) to create a private data co-op that utilises the measurement & analytics platform, ADARA Impact, to measure the effectiveness of their digital marketing efforts. By linking different but related travel data sets together, ADARA is able to create a Travel Graph for DCT, mapping out traveller behaviour of inbound and outbound tourists to the region. The analytic capability of ADARA Impact allows DCT and their media agency, Spark Foundry to track and measure the economic impact of DCT’s paid, owned and earned marketing investments leading to deep and actionable insights across the audience visitation journey.

This is the first fully integrated ADARA Impact partnership with a destination marketing organization in the Middle East and is a result of DCT’s innovative data-driven focus to help deliver on the Abu Dhabi Economic Vision 2030 and Abu Dhabi Plan. 
The innovative partnership, brokered by Spark Foundry, a Publicis Media agency, will see ADARA, DCT and Spark Foundry work together to connect the data of public and private sector participants in a secure environment.  This will create a mutually beneficial data sharing environment for all participants while limiting privacy concerns associated with an open global data exchange.

 Steve Copestake, Executive Director of Marketing and Communication at DCT said:   “ADARA’s Impact platform will help give DCT the transparency we need to measure the true economic impact of our marketing initiatives. We aspire to go beyond traditional media metrics and optimise towards KPIs such as Average Daily Rates and Length of Stay. By building DCT’s own private eco-system and coupling it with ADARA’s connected view of the traveller we have unprecedented access to travel trends and behaviours into Abu Dhabi’.

Layton Han, CEO, ADARA added “This partnership is a great example of a forward-thinking Destination Marketing Organisation and digital agency embracing data to deliver genuine economic impact to the region. We are thrilled to be working with innovators like DCT and Spark Foundry and look forward to continued success and expansion in the Middle East.”    

Alain Brahamcha. CEO of Spark Foundry added, “We are proud of this innovative partnership which unlocks data from ADARA and allows us to translate that into actionable insights which will deliver growth for DCT.  During these times and given how the travel consumer’s journey is heavily digital, this three-way partnership allows us to harness the power of ADARA’s data, architect and optimise investments to deliver effective and efficient results for DCT and helping to deliver international visitor growth for Abu Dhabi.