SOUTHINGTON —Town officials and a local marketing company are calling a year-long ad campaign a success.

Rebel Interactive Group, a Center Street marketing firm, used video, targeted online ads, a website and other tools to promote Southington as a destination. While town officials were considering the effort before the pandemic, they said its effects made a boost to businesses even more important.

The ads directed visitors to www.seesouthington.com, a website that showcased restaurants and activities in town.

“The digital ads were created and designed by Rebel’s team so that local and nearby residents learned more about Southington by way of the website, showing them how great this town is, motivating them to enjoy all that Southington has to offer,” said Bryn Tindall, Rebel Interactive CEO.

“I would call it a success,” said Mike DelSanto, a Town Council member and Economic Strike Committee chairman.

Rebel measured its success through two metrics common to online advertising efforts. Online ads were targeted to users in Southington and surrounding towns such as West Hartford, Glastonbury and Bristol. If parameters such as location and demographics were met, the ad would appear to a web user. Such appearances, called impressions, allow the ad to be seen even if a user doesn’t click on it.

Tindall said the campaign resulted in two million ad impressions.

Web users who clicked on the ad are known as click-throughs. The campaign generated 20,000 click-throughs.

“Showcasing our local communities and small businesses is a high priority for us, and with the size of the budget that was presented, we were happy that we could deliver so many impressions and visitors to the site,” Tindall said.

Town leaders awarded the year-long contract to Rebel last summer. The $40,000 contract was part of marketing efforts advocated by Lou Perillo, the town’s economic development coordinator. He's been working to market Southington as a recreation destination with attractions such as Lake Compounce and Crystal Bees. 

DelSanto said that Rebel’s analysis suggested success, although he hasn’t gotten feedback from business owners yet.

“A lot of their answers were pretty technical in nature, even after many many explanations we had a hard time figuring out,” he said. “They said it was a pretty successful campaign.”

DelSanto said the economic strike committee would consider a similar effort in the future.

DelSanto and other leaders had Rebel take a different approach a few months into the campaign after DelSanto said he wasn’t seeing any of the ads and hadn’t heard from other town residents that they’d seen them.

Rebel officials said they’d targeted out-of-town residents but shifted gears and included Southington web users earlier this year.

jbuchanan@record-journal.com203-317-2230Twitter: @JBuchananRJ