Why Destination Marketers Are Ditching Flat Display Ads for Interactive Ones

Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs) build content around dozens of traveler interests at once: dining, nightlife, outdoor recreation, and family attractions.

A standard display ad forces every viewer into the same single message, and that mismatch wastes ad spend on content nobody asked for. 

Interactive ads solve this by letting travelers choose their own path through that content.

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Interactive ads don’t just show travelers what a destination has to offer. They reveal what travelers actually want.

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Standard Display Wasn't Built for This Much Content But Interactive Ads Are

Dynamic display ads can swap creative by audience segment, but they still show one story per impression. A traveler interested in food never sees the nightlife content, and the DMO never learns that the food content was the wrong pitch to begin with. Interactive formats remove that guesswork. 

A single ad unit can hold the same range of content as a destination's own website: culinary guides, event calendars, trail maps, and family itineraries. The traveler picks a path, and every interaction becomes a signal.

In practice, that signal often points somewhere unexpected. In one campaign, most in-unit interactions went to culinary content, but most clicks through to the site came from a general "Discover More" call to action, not the culinary path itself. A flat display ad cannot surface that kind of category-level insight. An interactive unit does, by design.

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Interactive Ads Fit an Awareness Goal, Not a Booking Goal

Interactive formats work best as an upper- to mid-funnel tool. They drive awareness, education, and time spent with a destination brand rather than a direct transaction, and that fits how DMOs actually operate. There is no purchase or booking action to point a conversion pixel at when the product is a trip, not a cart.

Proxy signals fill that gap. Brochure downloads, form fills, and newsletter signups all indicate real intent to visit, even without a transaction behind them. Each one gives a DMO a name and a contact point to build a retargeting audience or a future email campaign around, which turns an awareness tactic into a pipeline for later, more direct outreach.

A foot traffic study tied to the campaign remains the clearest way to connect early engagement to an actual visit, though it takes more coordination and lead time than most campaigns build in. 

When a client site has limited action points, the measurement plan has to adapt to what is actually available. One state tourism client tracked campaign performance through a "heart" button on individual content posts, since that was the only meaningful engagement point available on the site. 

That kind of flexibility, choosing a proxy metric that fits the client's existing site rather than forcing a standard framework onto it, matters more for DMOs than for almost any other advertiser category.

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Interactive Ads Flex to Fit Any Campaign Goal

Interactive ads aren't one-size-fits-all, and that's the point. The format adapts to whatever KPI a campaign is built around, which means different advertisers get different features designed to drive the action that matters most to them.

For DMOs, that action is engagement and education. Travelers explore content, reveal their interests, and move toward a future visit rather than an immediate transaction.

For hotel chains and booking-focused brands, the format shifts to support direct action. Wiring a booking API into an interactive ad unit can shorten the path to conversion, letting users see available inventory and click through to complete a purchase or learn more, right from the ad itself.

The result is a format flexible enough to serve awareness-driven campaigns and booking-driven ones alike, tailored to whatever outcome the brand is optimizing for.

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Built as an Extension of the Agency Team

Most DMO and travel campaigns using interactive formats arrive through a reseller or an agency of record, not through a direct relationship with the brand. That changes how the work gets structured. 

Rather than replacing the agency's strategy, the interactive build slots into the media plan the agency has already set, with the destination brand's own creative direction driving the ad unit. The agency keeps the client relationship and the overall strategy, while the interactive format extends what the existing plan can do inside a single ad placement.

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From Client Assets to a Finished Ad Unit

Most clients hand off production entirely. The brand or agency provides the raw materials, video, images, blog content, and category information, and the interactive team builds the unit across every required ad size, then programs the interactivity on top. That keeps the lift on the client side light: gather the assets that already exist on the website, and let the production process turn them into a working ad.

Some brands prefer to build the layouts themselves and only need the technical framework to make the unit function. For those cases, PSD templates give internal design teams or agency creative teams full control over layout while still plugging into the same interactive infrastructure. Either path lands at the same outcome: a unit that reflects the brand's existing content and visual identity, not a generic template with the client's logo dropped in.

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What a Full Program Looks Like

• Multi-format video. Interactive display, in-stream and out-stream video, and dynamic connected TV (CTV) with personalized messaging and QR codes extend reach across the open web.
• ‍Quizzes and galleries. These capture stated preferences, such as adventure or dining, and feed future targeting and retargeting.
• Branded content units. Paid articles, blog hubs, and story units extend dwell time inside the display format itself.
• Dynamic retargeting. Creative adapts to a user's demonstrated interests from earlier engagement, keeping the message relevant on the second and third touch.

Every format in this list collects data as a byproduct of engagement, which means a destination brand learns what its audience actually cares about and shortens the distance between a first impression and real interest in the destination.

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Campaigns Putting This to Work

Montgomery Tourism

Visit Cecil

Visit Columbus

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Planning 2027 travel campaigns? See what interactive ads can do for your engagement...