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As much fun as testing and trying new things is, I think we all appreciate landing on a campaign that it both effective and reusable. Every one of these you find means one more block you can reliably place as you build your seasonal strategy.

That’s what I see with Ikon’s annual YouTube preroll.

A lot of resorts do a fall preroll campaign around pass sales but Ikon has what I would consider the most thoughtful approach over the years. They’ve consistently built on similar elements, run around similar dates, and had similar messages for quite a few years now. It’s nothing fancy, but it gets their brand back into the brains of their markets and keeps it there as other campaigns and channels help close the deal.

The version I’ve been served this year is being shown roughly 15-20k times a day for a total of 580,000 views thus far.

Pretty similar to their efforts of previous years. The element I haven’t seen before, however, is their use of site links below the traditional static ad that’s paired with the preroll.

These also show up on mobile in a 2×2 grid.

I think there is a more official term for these links in the YouTube ad platform that someone whose closer to that on a daily basis would know, the idea is straightforward: support the ad with clickable text that provides additional features and benefits. It adds helpful info their audience might care about plus it takes it up more visual real estate to draw someone’s attention to the ad. Not a bad combination.

For this year’s pass campaign, Alterra highlighted four benefits and perks. Again, these are clickable, so there’s a dedicated landing page for each as well.

1. Buy Now Pay Later

Highlighting their partnership with affirm reminds skiers they don’t have to pay for their pass all at once. And using a company with brand recognition and widespread usage like Affirm helps skiers better understand how that would work.

https://www.ikonpass.com/en/affirm-payment-plan

2. Pass Insurance

Ikon has two insurance types that are available to their passholders. Insurance isn’t sexy, but there’s a reason so many skiers and travelers buy it: it gives them the confidence they need to commit. Which, not surprisingly, is exactly the wording they used for this copy.

https://www.ikonpass.com/en/confidence-to-buy

3. Mobile App

The Ikon pass mobile app is solid. It provides the layers of achievement and tracking of other apps and platforms with a few additional perks and social layers. And it’s really well designed and built. I love that they’re highlighting this as a perk.

https://www.ikonpass.com/en/app

4. Ikon Pass Travel

Less familiar to many but a really important thing that I’ll probably talk more about in the future, is the travel planning service that is offered to passholders. I really, really like this concept as a whole because it really embraces the destination passholder idea and removes some of the barriers to get more of those passholders traveling each winter.

https://www.ikonpass.com/en/travel

Will any of these links get clicked thousands of times? Probably not. But given the rate this ad is being shown (plus others I’m not being targeted by), I love this little bit of extra scaffolding they’re adding to their fall campaign and imagine that they’re seeing consistent traffic to these pages as these preroll ads are served.

Yes, it builds that awareness and serves as a constant reminder to buy a pass like normal, but this new addition also gives viewers just a bit more info to help get them that much closer to pulling the trigger.

About Gregg & SlopeFillers
I've had more first-time visitors lately, so adding a quick "about" section. I started SlopeFillers in 2010 with the simple goal of sharing great resort marketing strategies. Today I run marketing for resort ecommerce and CRM provider Inntopia, my home mountain is the lovely Nordic Valley, and my favorite marketing campaign remains the Ski Utah TV show that sold me on skiing as a kid in the 90s.